


The Frame You Made

by Dira Sudis (dsudis)



Category: Generation Kill
Genre: Curtain Fic, Future Fic, Kid Fic, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-05
Updated: 2014-08-14
Packaged: 2018-02-07 15:21:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 24,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1903968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dsudis/pseuds/Dira%20Sudis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Six further epilogues for <em>Don't You Shake Alone</em>, 2004-2011.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Christmas 2004

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Don't You Shake Alone](https://archiveofourown.org/works/451663) by [Dira Sudis (dsudis)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dsudis/pseuds/Dira%20Sudis). 



> With many thanks to Templemarker, Olivia Circe, and Iulia for beta, and to all my many betas on Don't You Shake Alone who convinced me not to attempt to write all of this as an actual epilogue at the time.

Linus's first Christmas was something Nate had been anticipating with increasingly intense dread and eagerness since before Linus was born. Significance had been piling up on the date bit by bit until Nate could hardly see the holiday in the middle of it anymore. They would see Cory, and Cory would see Linus. Brad would be home, and Nate would return to Maryland for the first time since moving to Boston at the end of the summer. Nate's finals would be over. Christmas had been fixed as a shining beacon while Nate struggled through his first semester at Harvard, through the darkening days, through the horrible synergy of Linus teething during Nate's exam week. 

When the day finally came, Nate woke up to the unmistakable sensation of Linus's hand patting his cheek, although from an unexpected angle. 

Nate opened his eyes to a pained squint and looked up at Brad, holding Linus suspended over him. Nate couldn't help grinning, even if opening his eyes seemed to have been a horrible tactical error that allowed a headache to bloom through his skull. Brad's flight had been delayed yesterday; Nate had been afraid that after giving up on leave for Hanukkah in favor of Christmas Brad might miss both, but here he was. 

"I'm not touching you," Brad announced with a fond smile. "You're running a fever of a hundred and one, but your mom tells me Linus already had this and got over it two days ago."

Nate looked down at himself, reconsidering the way the sheets felt scratchy and too-hot against his skin, the way his burgeoning headache was echoed in his bones, throbbing in his shoulders and hips. 

"Oh," he croaked. "Fuck."

"Not without hosing you down in disinfectant first," Brad replied cheerfully. "You're allowed to come down for breakfast if you want, because everyone else in the house is already exposed, but your parents have banned you from going to your aunt's for dinner."

Nate tried to weigh the merits of breakfast with Brad and Linus and the rest of his family against the Herculean task of getting out of bed.

"Yeah," Brad said, jerking Nate back to full consciousness. "Come on, germ factory, give Daddy a kiss for me before we go downstairs."

Linus smacked a kiss against Nate's cheek, and then giggled as Brad lifted him up a few inches and then dropped him down for another kiss and another before Brad finally hoisted him up to his shoulder.

"Wake me up for presents," Nate mumbled, because he couldn't miss Linus's first Christmas morning. If Brad said anything in reply, Nate was out before he heard it.

* * *

Nate woke up again to find a piece of folded paper tucked into his hand. When he unfolded it and held it up, it showed Brad's handwriting: _I've got Linus. Sleep._

Nate smiled--Brad was home--and then remembered the rest. He was in the process of missing Christmas because he had, for the third time since September, caught whatever bug Linus had had first. He'd managed to fight through the other two bouts, but he was at his parents' for Christmas and there was clearly some sort of conspiracy of coddling in action.

Sadly, no one could relieve him of the responsibility to piss for himself. Nate sat up in slow, cautious stages and walked carefully to the bathroom, one hand to the wall for balance. It was only when he stepped back out that he recognized the deep stillness of the empty house around him. Everyone else must have gone to Christmas dinner. Nate recalled that he had been forbidden, and then remembered that he'd missed breakfast. He should probably make himself eat _something_ ; it looked like it was early afternoon at least, and he wouldn't get better any faster if he didn't eat. Nate held on to the railing and started down the stairs, focusing so carefully on not succumbing to dizziness that he didn't notice Brad waiting for him at the bottom until he was only a few steps away.

Nate smiled, but kept his head down and took the last few steps just as carefully, including the final step, which meant putting his foot down between Brad's feet and letting himself lean full-length against Brad. Both of Brad's arms went around him, and Nate reflexively asked, "Linus?" as he leaned his cheek against Brad's shoulder and let his eyes close. Brad was _home_.

"Napping," Brad assured him. "We made an appearance at your aunt's and he got hugged by everyone present. I got sneezed on by three different toddlers, so I'm giving up on not catching something."

"Yeah, Mom said Sarah's kids are sick, too," Nate agreed. They had exchanged germ reports yesterday after Nate got in, Linus red-cheeked and limp with sleep after being defiantly wide awake for eight of the ten hours of the drive down from Cambridge.

Brad's hand moved on his back, rubbing up and down Nate's spine, which made Nate aware that being pressed up against Brad didn't make him feel any less exhausted or clammy with sleep-sweat or suffused with vague pain and a not-right feeling in his belly that wasn't exactly nausea but wasn't _not_. 

"Dammit," Nate sighed. "We were going to have so much sex."

Brad kissed Nate's temple and said, "This would be a deeply disappointing transatlantic booty call if that was what I flew in for."

Nate's shoulders sagged a little.

"But it's looking like you're going to need someone who can stay awake for ten minutes straight and talk in complete sentences to Cory," Brad said. "So it's a good thing I'm here."

Nate nodded again, and a while after that he let Brad deposit him on a couch and bring him chicken soup in a mug so he didn't have to try to coordinate a spoon. Linus's presents were all still piled by the tree, with additions since Nate had last seen them. There were gifts from Santa, which Nate's parents were using to get around his limits on their presents, and a stocking full of different teething toys. The presents Brad had brought with him from England were there, too, plus several that they must have collected from Nate's extended family. 

"He doesn't know the difference," Brad pointed out, when he caught Nate looking. "You and Linus can open all your presents together when you're ready."

Just the idea of that was enough to make Nate groan wearily. He hid his eyes against Brad's shoulder and barely felt Brad take the mug from his hand before he was asleep again.

* * *

The next day, after several hours of steady effort toward getting washed and dressed and eating something, Nate was propped up on the couch. Linus was crawling around on the floor, enthusiastically crumpling and chewing on stray pieces of wrapping paper while totally ignoring all the actual contents of his presents. Nate felt vaguely like he ought to get the toys out of their packages, or read some of the books to Linus, or at least pick up the wrapping paper. On the other hand, Linus seemed happy and the wrapping paper probably wasn't any more toxic than anything else he stuck in his mouth on a regular basis. Brad didn't seem to have even as much compunction as Nate did--he kept grabbing pieces of wrapping paper and tossing them across the room to keep Linus chasing them. So far Linus was finding this hilarious rather than frustrating. 

The doorbell rang and Brad tensed, turning to look at Nate. Nate shook his head and pushed himself up carefully from the couch. Everyone else had decamped today--no one else seemed to have caught Nate and Linus's bug, though Nate had a sinking feeling that it might just be the incubation period giving them all a false sense of security--to leave Nate and Brad and Linus some privacy. Nate had been carefully hoarding the strength to do this one thing. He walked as briskly as he could to the front door, and paused, leaning against it, while he waited for the dizziness to pass.

The doorbell rang again, close enough to make him jump. Nate took a step back and opened the door.

Cory stood on the porch. She was wearing a green duffle coat over jeans, and she held a gift bag in one hand, her purse over her shoulder. She'd cut her hair shorter; it looked good, highlighting the shape of her face. Nate's heart squeezed a little as he recognized an echo of Linus in her dubious look.

"Nate?" she said finally. "Can I come in?"

"Yeah," Nate said, stepping back. "Sorry," Nate waved at himself. "I have this bug. Come on in, Linus is back here."

Cory shut the door behind her and followed him back, and Nate made it to the couch and sat down without falling. That was good. 

Brad was on his feet, and Cory hesitated when she saw him. Nate watched the two of them standing there, looking each other up and down. He'd never seen them together--Brad had scrupulously avoided her at Nate's paddle party. It was striking how neatly they matched each other: Brad was taller, of course, but Cory was nearly as tall as Nate was, and her athletically slim build wasn't unlike Brad's. With her hair cut short and her blue eyes tracking assessingly over Brad, the resemblance was....

Cory's face went tight, holding something back, and Nate's stomach twisted as he remembered the things that she had tried to hold back, before. A year ago they'd been celebrating Christmas together while biting their tongues on plans and possibilities for a future they couldn't bear to consider. They'd broken it off again in January, and Nate barely remembered when that had become final. It was a haze of one phone call after another and sleeping off too many nights drunk in a row on Ray's couch.

This time, though, when Cory gave way to internal pressure she burst out laughing. "Oh my God, Nate, if you'd introduced us at that goddamn party you could have saved a lot of steps."

Brad was starting to smile. Nate still didn't get the joke until Cory went on, "I mean, Jesus, I'm the girl version of your Marine boyfriend! I would have realized what you were doing a lot sooner."

Brad's smile brightened, showing teeth. Nate remembered him saying, back when Linus was only a couple of weeks old, _I promise to be magnanimous in victory_. True to his word, he offered consolingly, "Could just be that he has a type."

Cory snorted, shaking her head and still giggling. Nate smiled cautiously and Brad laughed a little himself, stepping forward to offer Cory his hand. "Brad Colbert, but you obviously know that."

Cory nodded. "Cory Earley. Good to finally meet you, Brad. The pictures really don't do you justice."

Linus had stayed half-hidden behind the Christmas tree when Cory came in, watching her warily. But when Brad moved, Linus followed him, so when Cory stepped back from shaking Brad's hand Linus was there, clinging to the leg of Brad's pants and trying to pull himself up to stand. 

Cory sank down to her knees and said, "Hi there, buddy. Do you remember me? It's been a while."

Cory hadn't seen Linus since Nate took him up to Cambridge. Nate was pretty sure she'd been dropping in to visit Linus at Nate's parents' house every few weeks until then, though his mom had only mentioned Cory's parents coming by. 

Linus's legs sagged and he dropped onto his diapered butt, his eyes fixed in fascination on Cory though he still had one hand clenched on Brad's pants. He waved his other hand at her, and Cory waved back and then reached out to bump his chin with her knuckle. Linus grabbed her hand and pitched slightly forward as he mouthed at her knuckle, bathing it in spit. Nate watched Cory's face; she looked more or less undeterred by the gnawing and drooling. When she flinched, Nate figured Linus had chomped down with his newest teeth. 

"Hey, little man," Brad said, leaning down to pick Linus up, detaching him from Cory in the process. "No teeth, that's rude."

Cory straightened up when Brad did, her gaze staying on Linus. She reached out again, running her hand over his hair, and then looked over at Nate and said lightly, "So, how's your crazy lately?"

A few weeks into treatment--a solid two weeks after his therapist started gently but firmly pointing out that he really needed to--Nate had asked his mom to explain to Cory's parents about his diagnosis and keep them updated on his progress. That meant Cory knew, too, which was the whole point; if she felt she had grounds to contest custody, she had that right. Nate had never heard a word about it, but Cory had every right to ask.

"Pretty well controlled," Nate replied, matching her tone. "How much detail do you want on my symptoms and treatment?"

"Linus needs a diaper change," Brad announced abruptly. "Excuse us."

Nate couldn't help smiling, watching Brad and Linus as they went. He looked back to Cory to find her studying him with a slight smile on her face.

She came and sat down on the couch, leaving space between herself and Nate but not pressing up against the opposite armrest. "You would marry _him_ in a heartbeat, wouldn't you?"

Nate nodded. "If he'd have me, and if it wouldn't torpedo his career."

"Just like that," Cory said, shaking her head a little. "You remember when we got engaged? You spent three days looking like you were about to throw up. It was the least you'd yelled in three or four months. I remember thinking, _Well, at least now I know how to shut him up_ , and then I realized that was no way to...."

Nate winced. "I know I probably said this a few times already, but I'm really, really sorry about everything I said and did before Linus was born."

"You're not sorry about the parts where you convinced me to have him," Cory pointed out, but there was nothing accusatory in her voice. That was a change. "It took me a long time to figure out that you were scared out of your mind. It doesn't make it okay that you were a fucking psycho asshole for seven months while I was pregnant with your kid, but it makes it harder to hate you for it now that you've got your shit together."

Nate nodded, looking down at the wreckage of Linus's presents. "Thanks."

"Well, I've had almost a year to tell everyone I know, including _my_ therapist, what a shitty possessive rage-monster boyfriend you were. But I was looking at your face the first time you saw Linus. I knew you were going to be a good dad, even if you were an awful boyfriend."

"I could've been awful to him," Nate said, remembering that night when he finally realized it; even now he could feel his arm drawing back to swing. "I almost was. If Brad hadn't shown up when he did I would've gone a lot further off the rails."

"Yeah?" Cory sounded genuinely interested, and Nate turned his head to meet her gaze. "What'd he do? Is it just that you were willing to listen to him because he's your beautiful perfect Marine boyfriend? Because I'm pretty sure I tried to tell you a few times that there was something fucking wrong with you, and you didn't listen."

Nate remembered some of those conversations. She'd started out calm and sensible, making her case with the airtight logic of a law student. Later on it had gotten louder and she had definitely used the exact phrase _something fucking wrong with you_. He remembered that fight.

"It was partly that he was one of my Marines," Nate admitted. "When he called me a fucking psycho, I knew exactly who he was comparing me to. I didn't want to be that guy."

Cory tilted her head in a sort of acknowledging nod. 

"But it was also Linus," Nate said. "I got worse after he was born, being on my own with him. Bad enough that I could actually see that there was something fucking wrong with me. Bad enough that I was starting to scare myself. When Brad told me I might as well be some nutjob three inches away from bayoneting a prisoner... I couldn't fail to hear him at that point, no matter how much I hated it."

"I wasn't thinking of him," Brad said, and Nate looked up to see him standing in the doorway with Linus in his arms. Linus was gnawing on a day-old sugar cookie and almost certainly hadn't had his diaper changed, and Nate couldn't help remembering Brad taking Linus out of his hands that night. _Not while I'm holding your kid, you fucking psycho._

"When I said that," Brad elaborated. "You never reminded me of him."

Nate raised his eyebrows. "No? Because some days I still remind myself of him."

"Well, that's about as much use as he's ever been to anyone," Brad conceded, and came back to settle Linus in Nate's lap.

"I also knew I could take Nate in a fight if it came to that," Brad told Cory. "Makes it a little easier to keep your cool in the face of a possessive rage-monster if you know he can't hurt you when he flies off the handle."

Cory nodded thoughtfully, watching Brad as he went to sit down in an armchair. Nate tightened his arms around Linus. Linus, who was getting close to his naptime, twisted around and sprawled obligingly against Nate's chest. Nate kissed the top of his head.

"I kind of wished he would, sometimes," Cory told Brad. "Hit me, I mean. Then I'd have known for sure that he was the bad guy and I had to leave, and I wouldn't just be some bitch who dumped a guy for coming back from a war kind of messed up. We were dating before you guys went to Iraq, I knew what Nate was supposed to be like. I knew he was sick. I totally got that, I just. I couldn't. And I wasn't really cut out for the baby thing, either, so it didn't seem like such a bad idea to let Nate have custody. I figured if Nate was still a controlling asshole by the time the baby was old enough to care, I could be around by then, and kind of offer him an alternative. I like kids okay when they're old enough to tell you what they want to eat and talk about stuff in sentences."

"I'm looking forward to potty-training," Brad agreed.

"You're looking forward to him _being_ potty-trained," Nate corrected, shifting Linus against his chest. It didn't actually help; the weight he felt pressing him down was exhaustion, not the baby. 

A second later he realized his eyes were closed. He opened them to look at Brad and Cory both gazing back at him with weirdly similar smiles on their faces. Nate closed his eyes again and hoisted Linus up against his shoulder. 

"No one looks forward to doing the potty-training," Nate insisted, rubbing his nose against Linus's hair. Linus patted his chest as if in agreement. It wouldn't be much fun for him, either.

"Anyway," Cory said. "I've got my calendar here, I want to set up some visits. Have you got Nate's schedule?"

"Yeah, and my next couple of leave windows," Brad agreed, and Nate didn't bother listening after that. This was what Brad was here for, after all. Nate could let him handle it.


	2. October 2005

The first thing Brad noticed was that Nate was being squirrelly as fuck. 

Brad had been back in country for the length of the trip from Logan to Nate's apartment, and he had a long leave ahead of him before he had to report to Lejeune. Nate kissed Brad at the door, pleased as ever to see him. Brad kissed him back with equal enthusiasm, at least until Linus toddled over and started trying to insert himself into their embrace, yelling Brad's name. "Da da da da da!" 

"Hey, little man," Brad said, breaking away from Nate to swing Linus up. Brad hadn't seen him in person for four months, and he once again seemed like a whole different baby--hardly even a baby anymore. He was a toddler, on his way to being a _kid_. Brad hauled him into a hug as if it could erase all the time he'd spent an ocean away, and Linus clung to him with his whole tiny body.

But when Brad looked over at Nate, Nate had stepped back instead of stepping in. He was watching them with an expression Brad couldn't quite read, and the distance didn't let up for the rest of the day.

There could have been a lot of reasons for that. Nate's PTSD had been triggered to hell and gone at the end of August, and he was still in the long tail of recovery from the flare--slowly closing in on Nate's version of normal but not quite there yet. He'd missed the first week of classes for the semester, hiding out in San Diego and letting Brad's parents take care of Linus while he avoided watching the news out of New Orleans and worked on holding himself together. 

Brad was still thanking a God he didn't believe in that there hadn't been an earthquake while they were in California. Nate probably would have thrown Linus into a rental car and disappeared into the Sierra Nevada until Brad could come home and round up a Bravo Two posse to bring him in.

That was nearly two months ago, though, and Nate was doing a lot better now. Anyway, he wasn't that kind of edgy. Brad knew what Nate looked like when he was battening down the hatches better than probably anyone else in the world. This wasn't that, or wasn't just that; this was Nate trying to keep something from Brad.

Brad had a pretty good idea of what it was, or at least where it started. It had only been a faint, nasty suspicion until he got home, but every minute he spent in Nate's presence made it more obvious that something was going on. As the afternoon wore on, marked with weird silences from Nate and that faraway every time he thought Brad was too busy with Linus to notice, Brad became more and more convinced he'd been right to suspect.

Back at the end of September, Nate had still been in pretty bad shape and hadn't wanted to leave Cambridge, or let Linus out of the city without him, when Cory's next scheduled weekend with Linus came up. Cory had agreed to stay at Nate's instead of whisking Linus off for a weekend in New York. 

Brad had gotten a string of texts from Cory in lieu of Nate's usual check-in email on Friday night. _Sorry, I got Nate drunk. He says I have to tell you he's okay because he can't email you._

_He's okay. Linus is okay._

_They miss you though. xoxo_

Brad had told himself that that didn't necessarily mean that Nate had gotten drunk and fucked his ex and then been too wasted or too guilty to write a damn status email. Nate could have stopped at getting drunk. Occam's Razor, all that shit.

Nate had been back on schedule the next morning. He complained about being hung over in his regular morning email and mentioned that Cory was making breakfast. That had been the end of it, except that Brad couldn't get the picture out of his head: the three of them in Nate's little student apartment together, Cory with Linus on her hip cooking breakfast for Nate.

It wasn't like Brad would blame Nate if it were true. Brad had been gone three months by then, through one of the toughest times Nate had had since Linus was born. Brad wanted him to get whatever kind of comfort he could find, and Brad liked Cory. She had a cool, pragmatic streak that would have served her well in combat, except that she was too smart to get mixed up in the military. If she'd thought fucking Nate would be good for him, that night or in the long run, she'd probably been right. Brad couldn't fault her logic.

He wasn't even sure he had any right to care who Nate fucked when Brad was out of the country. Brad wouldn't have dwelled much on Nate hooking up with some random grad student or someone he picked up at a bar, but Nate had tried to marry Cory. She was Linus's mom.

Nate had given Brad permission--even while insisting that he knew it wasn't his to give--to fuck whoever he wanted in England. Nate had asked him to just be safe, and to refrain from telling Nate about it. Nate hadn't said anything about what he was going to be up to while Brad was gone, and Brad had declined to offer him the same deal. He didn't want Nate fucking other people, but he knew that Nate was going to make his own decisions no matter what Brad said. Brad wasn't going to give him a free pass, but he wasn't going to delude himself that he could stop him, either. He'd said nothing about it at all, and fucked absolutely no one in England, and he'd almost made his peace with whatever Nate had done with Cory.

Except that Nate was being squirrelly, which meant it wasn't over. Brad had arrived after Linus's afternoon nap, so they had four hours before Linus would go to bed and Nate would tell Brad what was going on. Brad tried to memorize every second, in case it was never like this again, but that just meant it already wasn't.

* * *

Brad helped Nate put Linus to bed. They'd gotten through the Odyssey and the Iliad before Linus started stating his own opinions. Brad had never thought he'd miss Greek poetry, but he was reconsidering that after six renditions of _One Fish, Two Fish_ , which was Linus's current obsession. He liked yelling _fish!_ every time the word occurred, which was a lot; he was too delighted by it for Brad to say no to another repeat of the book until Nate put his foot down.

Brad took a shower after. It was a little cowardly, putting off whatever Nate was going to say, but the fact that Nate hadn't said anything yet had to mean there was still some room to maneuver. Maybe they could fuck before Nate started talking; maybe Brad could change Nate's mind about whatever it was he was thinking.

Brad walked into Nate's room wearing only a towel, and Nate was already in bed, sitting up against his pillow in nothing but a pair of boxers. Brad had meant to take note of the way Nate looked at him, but he was distracted by the sight of Nate's ribs. He hadn't gained back the weight he'd lost fighting that PTSD flare. 

_She needs to do a hell of a lot more cooking for him_ , Brad thought, which was a stupid thing to think about Cory, who mostly lived on takeout and energy bars plus two meals a day at her firm's cafeteria. But it was all real in that second: Nate needed someone _here_ , and Cory could be that in a way Brad wouldn't even be able to attempt for another eight years. 

"So this sounds bad," Nate said, his voice light, "but I wanted to talk."

Brad's eyes snapped up to Nate's face, trying to see how this was going to go. He wished he was wearing more than a towel, all of a sudden. 

"No, not like that," Nate said. He patted the bed. "Come here. It's nothing like that."

Okay, well, that probably meant Nate wasn't actually breaking up with him. _Yet_. Brad walked over warily and sat down at the end of the bed facing Nate, folding up his legs and draping his arms over them.

Nate studied him for a few seconds--doing his own tactical survey, Brad would swear. He gave a sharp little nod. 

"I'll just ask," Nate decided. "What do you think about having a kid?"

Brad didn't actually think at all before the words burst out. "Jesus _Christ_ , Nate, did you knock her up again already?"

There was a flash of blank shock on Nate's face, but the first thing out of his mouth was, "Who, Cory?" so it wasn't like he didn't know what Brad was talking about.

"Yes, _Cory_. She's Linus's mom, I know you know who she is."

Nate still looked disbelieving, and Brad was distantly aware that the fact that Nate hadn't turned angry yet was actually a really good sign for his recovery.

"Brad, Cory wouldn't let me between her legs in a hazmat suit," Nate insisted, but his words broke around a tiny hesitation.

"Fuck, if you're going to lie to me would you at least be _convincing_ about it? I know you fucked her last month."

And _there_ it was, Nate going coldly furious in the blink of an eye. His voice was hard and clipped, the LT making a show of force. "That's some fucking amazing detective work, Brad, because I know no such thing. Would you care to cite your source?"

Brad hesitated. He couldn't point to anything and say, _this, for sure_. 

"I wasn't mad about it," Brad said carefully, not so much retreating as shifting laterally from his first line of attack. "You were drunk. Things happen. You've been weird as _fuck_ today, I know there's something you're not telling me. I figured Cory was it."

"You figured," Nate said sharply, and then Brad watched a year and a half of intensive therapy kick in. Nate closed his eyes and took three deep breaths, swallowed hard, and modulated his voice down to something that sounded like patience. "Have you been thinking that I slept with her ever since that weekend?"

Brad shrugged helplessly. When Nate opened his eyes Brad said, "I didn't mind."

Nate looked a little pained. "Yeah, that sounded like you didn't mind."

"Well, I mind if she's pregnant," Brad said, trying to make it sound joking. It didn't come out right, though, because Nate flinched again. Even as the odds turned against it the possibility unfolded in Brad's head: Nate getting Cory pregnant again, maybe on purpose this time. Maybe he wouldn't even mean to break up with Brad. Maybe he just wanted another kid. 

"That's what you said," Brad realized, finally catching up with the actual facts on the ground. "You wanted to know what I thought about having another kid."

"I didn't sleep with Cory that night," Nate said, meeting Brad's gaze and holding it until Brad nodded acceptance. He had to believe Nate wouldn't lie straight out like that or he couldn't believe any of this. 

Nate looked down. "I did talk to her about some things that by rights I should have talked to you about first. Not--I wasn't thinking about it like that. I didn't mean to _talk to Cory_ about it. She was just the person who was there pouring me drinks, and it was something I'd been thinking about since we flew back from San Diego."

"From--" Brad said. "Nate, how is _that_ what you were thinking about? You were barely holding it together and you were thinking, what, _I'd really like to be wrangling another kid the next time this happens_?"

Nate flinched harder at that, and Brad wanted to shove the words right back down his own throat. But insisting that he hadn't meant it like that would only make it worse.

"That's why it's not my decision to make alone," Nate said. "Or--that's one of a lot of reasons. The main one is that you're my partner, and Linus's dad, and if we were going to add a kid to our family we'd have to decide that together. Another kid's not going to just happen like Linus did. I actually...." 

Nate trailed off and Brad let him, settling his chin on his crossed arms and waiting.

"What I was trying to ask you," Nate said, sounding suddenly very tired, "is whether you've ever considered having a kid of your own. Biologically, I mean. Because I haven't been able to stop thinking that I'd like to be that kid's dad, too."

Brad felt like all the air had gone out of the room. It took an effort to draw in a breath and say, "Nate."

"I didn't mean this to be an ambush," Nate went on, looking steadily into his eyes, searching for something. Brad felt like there was nothing but a blank for him to see. "Just a conversation. I had no idea you were thinking--Brad, I wouldn't. I know you didn't ask me, and I didn't go out of my way to promise you, but I wouldn't. Not with Cory, not with anyone."

Brad shook his head, not disagreeing. That was Nate all over, his romantic ideals. Brad hadn't wanted to test Nate's ideals too hard; he'd seen what could happen to them. 

"Me either," he said instead. "I didn't want your permission, and I didn't use it."

"Good," Nate said, and he wasn't quite smiling, but Brad could see the satisfaction in his eyes, and something finally clicked into place between them, the last of the distance disappearing.

"Good," Brad echoed back. He uncurled, letting his towel fall away as he moved in on Nate. He didn't stop until he was straddling Nate's lap. "Are we done talking about this for right now? You need a decision tonight?"

Nate's mouth tilted toward a smile as he looked up at Brad. He leaned his head back against the wall, leaving himself open. "No rush."

"We won't rush, then," Brad agreed, kissing Nate for what felt like the first time since he'd come home. He let himself relax into it, running his hands aimlessly over Nate's shoulders and chest, getting used to his presence all over again. _He's here, he's still here, we're still here, it's not over, no one's going anywhere. We're safe._

"You know," Nate said a while later, when they'd both slid down on the bed and Brad's hands had started wandering. Brad could hear the careful evenness in his voice that meant he wasn't allowing himself to sound out of breath, and got to work sucking a bruise into the base of his throat. "I put the white noise machine on in Linus's room. In case there was yelling."

Which meant, Brad thought, that Nate had been prepared for the conversation to go a lot worse. Among other things.

Brad lifted his head and grinned. "Was that a challenge?"

Nate was smiling for real now, open and bright and fearless. "Just--observing an opportunity we could be exploiting."

Brad slid lower on the bed and got to work on making Nate yell.

* * *

They lay curled together, after, Nate pressed up against Brad's back. They were both facing away from the door, toward the corner of the room past the bed where Linus's crib had been before Nate got to the point of letting him sleep in his own room all the time. There was still space, though, Brad thought. For next time.

"I didn't mean you couldn't," Brad said, knowing Nate wasn't asleep either. Nate's fingers curled in a little against his chest.

"I had to have help just with Linus," Nate pointed out, sounding so reasonable and neutral that Brad knew he'd been having this argument with himself for weeks now, and probably lost more often than he won. "It's a fair point."

Brad shook his head. "You got the help you needed. If you needed twice as much help you'd have gotten that, too. I know you'd do whatever you had to do, Nate. I have as much faith in you as my kid's dad as I ever did in you as my CO."

He felt Nate's face press against the back of his shoulder, and a little shiver went through Nate. Brad gave up and turned over to face him. Nate let him, but kept his eyes closed, his head tucked close to Brad's on the pillow. 

"If you want another kid," Brad said helplessly. "It's up to you."

"No," Nate said, and that did make him look at Brad. "This can't be up to me alone, not if we're together."

It could, though. Nate could make it happen any time he wanted to; if Nate had told him Cory was pregnant that would have been it, fait accompli. 

"You're the one who's here," Brad insisted. "You're the one who would have to drag two kids on a plane and deal with their sleep schedules and catch colds from both of them, so you--"

Nate's hand covered his mouth. "Brad, I don't care how much you're gone. We're together. I'm not going to fuck anyone but you and I'm definitely not going to get someone pregnant without you being involved."

Brad couldn't help the smirk, because Nate had left himself wide open for that. "What, you need help now? You did just fine on your own the first time."

Nate huffed a little laugh. "I _was_ lying a little bit when I said Cory wouldn't let me anywhere near her."

"Yeah, I noticed," Brad said, distracted for a second by vindication, and then, "Wait. Seriously?"

"Well, she said her first choice of scenarios is _you_ knocking her up this time," Nate said. "But she's willing to negotiate if you don't want to."

Brad was tempted to disbelieve Nate, but he knew Cory well enough that he could picture her just busting out with that proposition. 

"Christ," Brad said, almost reverently, and Nate leaned in and kissed him in something that felt like agreement.

"We don't have to decide tonight," Nate said. "Just... think about it."

* * *

Brad couldn't _stop_ thinking about it. He managed to get to sleep all right, only to wake an hour before dawn. He was still on Devon time; this was probably the last time he'd be scrambled so badly until his next deployment. He and Nate would be in the same time zone until then, for months at least, maybe a year or more. Brad made himself lie still beside Nate, willing his body to relax and understand that there was more time yet to sleep.

His brain whirred on anyway, thinking about what Nate had asked--not just another kid, but _Brad's_ kid. He'd vaguely imagined having kids back when he was with Kristi. It had seemed like part of the package: marry his childhood sweetheart, pop out a couple of cute kids to wave flags on the tarmac when he got home. When Kristi left, the whole idea left with her, and Brad had gotten settled on the idea of not having kids at all until Linus came along and broke Brad's whole life open to make a space for himself.

So if one, why not two? Brad could sort of picture it--Nate balancing two kids on his lap for Skype calls, a baby in Nate's arms while Linus toddled around. If Brad retired when Linus was nine, the next kid would only be, what, six? Five? 

He could miss less of that kid. And instead of looking for glimpses of Nate in a baby's face, he might see flashes of himself.

On the other hand, Jesus, _two_ kids. Brad spent enough time worrying about Linus, trying to map out a future that would give him everything he needed. Would the worry about a second kid telescope into the space that Linus currently took up, or expand to take over Brad's life? Could he ever be as fiercely attached to a second kid as he was to Linus? Could he bear missing another kid as badly as he missed Linus every time he had to leave?

Pre-dawn was turning the sky outside the window gray when Nate rolled over and slung an arm across Brad's chest, tucking his forehead against Brad's shoulder. With a yawn he said, "Are you seriously trying to figure this all out in one night?"

"Well, I'm awake," Brad said. "Might as well."

Nate shook his head against Brad's shoulder, rolled away and got up. Brad heard the faint shushing sound of the white noise machine turn off in Linus's bedroom, and Nate came back and laid Linus down on Brad's chest. Brad remembered the first time Nate had done that; Linus had actually fit in the space then.

Now he was a heavy, long-legged toddler, limp and warm with sleep, slightly sweaty. Brad ran his fingers helplessly through the damp curls of Linus's hair.

"Do you seriously want to do the baby thing again?" Brad asked.

"I'd like to see what it's like when I'm a little more stable," Nate said. "It's not a deal-breaker."

Brad looked over at him. "Why, though? Why another kid? Just--to have one who's mine?"

It was a weird thought, maybe a good one. Each of them having a kid with Cory was the closest they could get to the biological impossibility of having a kid with each other. Brad's hypothetical kid would be Linus's half-sibling, maybe even look like him. It shouldn't make any difference--Brad knew he loved his own sisters just as much as Nate loved his--but there was some basic fascination to the idea anyway.

Nate shrugged. "Partly. But--we were on the way back from San Diego, and people talk to him, you know? And he's starting to talk back so people can understand. And the lady sitting next to us on the flight asked us why we'd been visiting California, and Linus said _Grandma_ , and I thought, oh shit, don't say that."

Brad rubbed Linus's back, taking a deep breath under his weight. "I told you we don't have to be that careful."

Nate waved his hand. "Still. There are things we're going to have to teach him not to tell strangers. And he's going to have to deal with being raised by _me_ and having a dad on active duty. I just--I don't want him to be alone with that. I want him to have someone else who's there with him. When he looks back at this he should have somebody to talk to who went through the same shit."

Brad would have liked to protest the idea that being raised by them was something traumatic that Linus was going to have to survive, but he knew better. And he couldn't fault Nate for knowing the value of having someone around who understood what you'd been through. Brad didn't share that with his sisters--his traumas, growing up, had been all his own--but watching Nate drink with _his_ sisters over the summer had been fascinating. Brad did share that kind of bond with Nate, and with plenty of brothers he'd found along the way. If they could give that to Linus without him having to go to war to find it....

"Well," Brad said, and took one hand away from Linus to reach for Nate. "When you put it like that, how can I refuse?"


	3. August 2006

"I love you," Nate repeated, leaning in for one more kiss.

Brad tightened his fist in the back of Nate's shirt, but he waited until Linus had smacked a cheerful kiss against Nate's cheek before he hauled Nate out of range. 

"Be good for Grandma and Grandpa," Brad said firmly over Nate's shoulder. "We'll see you tomorrow, little man."

Linus, held in Nate's mother's arms, waved and yelled out a cheerful, "Bye Dad! Bye Daddy!" 

Nate followed Brad's tug and turned away. 

He was just in time to have his back to his mother as she called after them, "You boys have a good night."

Brad turned and winked over his shoulder, saying easily, "Oh, we will."

Nate just grinned and ducked his head, suppressing the weird half-guilty impulse to explain that it wasn't going to be _quite_ the date night his mom thought she was helping them have. It wasn't any of her business. Nate knew that. Logically, he knew that. 

This was between him and Brad and Cory, tonight and for however long it took for them to get this right. He might not even be involved on the next tries, if they needed more; coordinating the logistics to get himself down to South Carolina along with Cory on the necessary weekends to meet up with Brad on a quick libo would be somewhere between extraordinarily difficult and actually impossible. The stars had aligned for this attempt, though, and they were all able to meet in DC.

Brad took the wheel, leaving Nate to sit in the passenger seat and try not to think about anything at all for the forty-five minute drive from his parents' house to Cory's. Brad left him to it, singing along softly sometimes with the mix CD he'd made for Linus, which Linus insisted on listening to every single time they were in the car. Nate knew all the words to "Telegraph Road" now, and sang along under his breath for most of the song.

At the end of it, Brad reached out and shut the stereo off before the CD could start again; the silence in the car was louder than the music had been. Nate took a deep breath and let it out carefully, shuffling through his repertoire of breathing exercises and coping strategies before Brad said, "Nate, are _you_ sure about this?"

Brad had ordered Nate to stop asking him that six months ago. Cory had done the same even earlier.

"Yes," Nate said immediately, because he'd been over it and over it and he was _sure_. He'd considered every angle, weighed every possibility, hashed out every detail with Brad, with Cory, with his therapist, with _Ray_ , who had provided useful insights and filthy jokes in roughly equal measure. He'd floated the idea of a second kid past his parents, who'd made worried noises but didn't throw up any red flags. He had never been more sure of anything in his life.

"Because you sound like you're about one pothole away from a panic attack over there," Brad said, and Nate forced himself to uncurl his fingers from their grip on the door handle. 

"It's just," Nate said. "It's like the _second_ time you drive into an ambush. When you know exactly how bad it's going to be."

Brad's hands twitched on the wheel and car swerved slightly to the right; Brad almost pulling over and then deciding against making that big a deal about it. "If that was supposed to reassure me that you're okay with this--"

"I mean, it's also a kid, not a firefight, so I have some idea how _great_ it's going to be," Nate insisted. "It's just--I've never had sex with someone with the goal of getting her pregnant. It's different going into it knowing."

"First of all," Brad said, "you're not getting anyone pregnant."

Nate tilted his head, acknowledging the point.

"Second," Brad went on, as his hand left the wheel to settle warmly on Nate's knee. "I haven't either, Jesus, this is crazy."

Nate grinned and settled his hand over Brad's, giving a squeeze. "Performance anxiety?"

"I mean, fucking Christ, Nate, I know how to get a girl off, but this time I have to succeed at _the miracle of life_ or I have fucking _failed_."

"Have you been talking to Ray?" Nate asked, although that was a stupid question, even without _the miracle of life_ being a dead giveaway. 

"Arguing with all the retarded things he says is sort of soothing," Brad admitted. "Takes my mind off the fact that I've spent a year planning a single sex act and I don't actually control whether or not I succeed at it."

Nate nodded. "For the record, though, there's no one else I'd rather be driving into an ambush with."

"Well, then," Brad said, smiling a little. "Let's go take that bridge."

* * *

Cory answered the door wearing a thin tank top and faded pajama bottoms Nate remembered from two years earlier. She grinned at the sight of them. "Come on in, guys. I'd offer you drinks, but if I'm not allowed to get drunk no one is."

"Fair," Brad said, stepping in ahead of Nate. He started to say something else as Nate shut and locked the door behind them, and then cut off abruptly.

Nate turned back to see that Cory had backed Brad up against the wall of the foyer and was rising up on her tiptoes to kiss him.

Brad was smiling open-mouthed, and Nate could read _challenge accepted_ in every line of his body. He let Cory surge up and kiss him, but as soon as their lips met Brad had his hands on her ass, yanking her tight against his body. Cory made a startled noise but doubled down; Nate could see her mouth open, a flash of tongue between their lips.

Nate leaned back against Cory's front door, crossing his arms over his chest to remind him to keep his hands to himself. This was their show, tonight; he was only here to help out as needed. And watch.

Watching wasn't going to be any hardship, which was a relief, down in the dark of his brain where he'd let himself worry about that at all. He loved Brad fiercely, and Cory had become a good friend in the last year or so, in addition to the way Nate would always helplessly love her because of Linus. He still hadn't been a hundred percent sure that he wanted to watch them fuck; he hadn't quite dared to really fantasize about it. Even knowing he was supposed to be there, supposed to watch, it had seemed wrong to picture this for his own pleasure. 

He really, really didn't mind watching it happen, though. Cory had her arms up on Brad's shoulders, all but climbing him as she rocked into him, and Nate knew how good it felt to be on either side of that equation. He shifted his weight a little, feeling the tension in his body change over from anxiety into excitement, nerve endings waking up.

Nate could have sworn he didn't make a sound, but Brad turned his head a little anyway, opening one eye to look his way, checking in.

Nate smiled and made a shooing motion with the fingers of his right hand without unfolding his arms. _Go on, get back to it_.

Brad smirked enough to interrupt the kissing, though, and Cory pulled back to catch them watching each other. She grinned, peeling herself off of Brad and wriggling down to stand on her own feet, letting Brad's hands slide up to her waist. 

"You miss your babydaddy already?" Cory asked as Brad's attention came back to her.

Brad's smirk widened into a grin. "With every bullet so--" and Nate could see the smothered laugh shake Brad's shoulders as Cory cut him off with another kiss.

"All right," Cory said a moment later, pulling herself away from Brad again but catching one of his hands. She glanced toward Nate, including him as she turned toward the stairs and said, "Let's get it on. Shoes off, please."

Brad toed off his shoes and then followed where Cory led him, glancing back toward Nate with another amused look as Nate checked the front door lock. Nate kicked his shoes over next to Brad's and trailed them up the stairs to Cory's bedroom. Nate had never been into this room before--he'd seen Linus's room at Cory's, but that door was firmly closed tonight--and he hesitated now in the doorway while Cory towed Brad inside. 

Nate's eye went, unavoidably, straight to the bed. It was a king--Cory had always liked being able to sprawl out--and neatly made, covered in a patterned dark purple spread. 

"So," Cory said to Brad, while Nate was still leaning against the doorframe. "You mind if I give your boyfriend a kiss before we get started?"

Brad glanced toward Nate and then back to Cory, and Nate watched in fascination as the two of them carried on an entirely wordless conversation. Brad gave way after several seconds with a pointedly magnanimous gesture, and Cory grinned and walked over to Nate, beckoning him inside as she did. He obeyed, peeling himself off the wall and taking a couple of steps inside to meet her. 

Nate settled his hands at her hips and let her step into the kiss, following her lead. He didn't part his lips until her tongue flicked across them. Even then he stayed passive, letting her kiss him, responding but not pushing.

"Huh," Cory said, tilting her head. "That all you got? Because I remember--"

Nate snorted-- _challenge accepted_ indeed--and pulled her a little closer, diving into a real kiss. He'd been good at this, with her, once. He'd known how to make her breathless, how to make her--yes, squirm into him just like that, digging her short, manicured fingernails into the back of his neck.

"Okay," Cory said, when she pulled back decisively. Nate dropped his hands as soon as she started to back up. "That's more like it."

She was smiling, her lips pink and shiny, and she tapped his lower lip with a finger. "I missed that mouth."

The way she said it sounded more like _I have plans for your mouth_ , and Nate finally, viscerally understood that he hadn't been invited along just to watch. His gaze skipped past Cory to Brad, who'd gone slightly slack-jawed and a little flushed. He'd also backed _away_ a step, which made Nate shift his weight in Brad's direction even with Cory still more or less in his arms.

Cory made another amused noise and stepped out from between them, giving Nate a light shove in Brad's direction. 

"You boys get undressed for me," she said with a casually imperious wave of her hand. She went to sit on the end of the bed, drawing her knees up and folding her arms across them, obviously intending to watch.

Nate turned his attention back to Brad, who was watching him with a little smirk on his face that echoed Cory's expression. Nate found himself thinking, _God, we know exactly what that kid is going to look like_ , and then stepped in to kiss Brad, cradling Brad's face between his hands. 

Brad hauled him in tight, picking up where Cory had left off in kissing him senseless. They'd barely had a chance to touch since Brad got into town that afternoon, and before that it had been a month. It wasn't hard to lose track of everything else in favor of kissing Brad, and Nate wasn't thinking of anything but that when he dropped his hands to tug at Brad's clothes. They had a routine for this by now, and Brad let Nate haul his shirt off before he came back in for another kiss and started working on unfastening Nate's pants. Nate did Brad's at the same time, and stopped when he had Brad's zipper down to strip his own shirt off and--

He stopped there, because they weren't at home, and none of the usual places where Nate would toss his shirt were available. Instead there was Cory, watching them with a small fascinated smile on her face. She'd uncurled a little, leaning back on her hands, her head tilted, though her knees were still drawn up. She raised an eyebrow when he met her eyes, and Nate tossed his shirt at her, for lack of anything else to do with it.

Cory rolled her eyes but caught it, and in the moment of Nate's distraction Brad got his hands into Nate's pants. Nate returned his attention to Brad, who pushed in for another kiss as he shoved Nate's pants down. Nate pushed right back, stepping out of his jeans and kicking them off while he slid his own hands into Brad's underwear. Brad had a hand on Nate's ass under his boxers, keeping him close, but Nate went straight for the target and got his hand on Brad's dick. He was already stiffening up, and Nate stroked him along, kissing as filthy as he knew how, right up until the word _fluffer_ suddenly popped into his head and he had to break his mouth away from Brad's to laugh. He _was_ ; that was exactly why he was here.

Brad was grinning when Nate opened his eyes, and he yanked Nate's boxers down--Nate automatically twisted away even though it was exactly what he wanted--in instinctive retaliation. Nate got Brad's pants down in turn, looking over at Cory as he did; her shoulders were shaking with a silent laugh.

"The inevitable naked except for socks moment," Brad observed. He shook his head, mostly straight-faced, and balanced on one foot to peel off an offending sock. Nate stopped laughing and looked back and forth between Brad and Cory, admiring the view for his own sake and vicariously through her.

Cory huffed and shook her head, standing up to tug the cover down off the bed--the sheets were striped, purple and blue, new-looking. "Nate, Brad, come on, on the bed, let's go." 

Brad gave him a helpful shove. Nate shoved back, maneuvering Brad into the middle of the bed, between Nate and Cory, who was perched on the far side.

That meant Brad could be the one to reach out to Cory, tugging gently on the drawstring of her pajama pants as he said, "You planning on joining us? Because I'm pretty sure the way this works you're going to have to lose some clothes."

"Oh, did Nate explain to you where babies come from?" Cory said, hooking one foot over Brad's bare thigh, sweeping another thoughtful look over both of them, naked for her. When she looked up again it was Nate's eyes she met, and it was Nate she spoke to as she said, "Everything's not exactly like you remember it under here, y'know."

Nate raised his eyebrows. "Last time I saw you naked you were six months pregnant, so I kind of figured."

Brad elbowed him a little at the same time Cory made a face. Nate leaned across Brad to hook one finger into the top of her pants, his knuckle pressing into the soft curve of her belly. 

"Hey," Nate said, holding her gaze. "I'm the last guy in the world who can judge you for the scars you brought back from your war, okay?"

Cory's lips curved in a small, genuine smile, entirely without bravado. She sat up straight--not dislodging his hand or Brad's, still quietly holding on to that drawstring--as she peeled her tank top off with a toss of her head, like she was doing them every bit as much of a favor as she was.

Cory's tits looked, Nate thought, pretty much like Cory's tits; it was going on three years since the last time he'd seen them. He still got the same little thrill of pleasure and anticipation he always had when she took her shirt off, his fingers twitching with the urge to touch. Nate dragged his gaze up to Cory's eyes and grinned, showing his teeth. "Looks good so far."

Cory bared her teeth right back, and Brad said mildly, "As the person in the room who's never seen you naked before--"

That was as far as Brad got before Cory kissed him. Nate leaned back to a mostly safe distance--one hand still on Brad's thigh--to watch until they fell back on the bed. Cory lay beside Brad, stretched out on her side, and Nate thought it wasn't so much that she was shy of making contact--she had her free hand on his chest already, sliding down--but that she was leaving herself open. 

Nate still hung back, staying on Brad's other side, just watching, but Brad didn't hesitate, cupping her breast as he kissed her. His thumb found her nipple, and Cory shivered a little, her breath hitching in a way that went straight to Nate's dick. 

Nate knew, though, that she hit the point of diminishing returns pretty fast, and the second touch was never as good for her as the first. When Brad repeated the same stroke Nate moved around to sit on Cory's other side, scooting down to curl over her so that he could lick across her nipple and Brad's thumb together. That got him a gratifying doubled noise from both of them.

Nate sucked, and that got him Cory's hand in his hair and Brad's thumb pressing against his lower lip, and he kept it up until Cory pushed him lower. 

Nate looked up to see Cory and Brad both watching him, and Cory gave him another little push. "Seriously, if you're waiting for more of an engraved invitation than you already got, we're gonna be here all night."

Nate raised his eyebrows, but Brad beat him to the actual words, kissing along Cory's throat as he said, "If you've got a hot date...."

Cory tilted her head back--Brad had found that spot she liked the best--and Nate grinned and got with the program, hooking his fingers into the top of Cory's pants and tugging them down, kissing the curve of her hip as he did. She lifted her hips helpfully as Nate pulled them lower, and he gave her another kiss, lower down, when he realized she wasn't wearing underwear. He sat up to work her pants the rest of the way off and toss them off the bed without falling off himself.

Cory shifted onto her back, splaying one leg out over Brad's, and Brad shifted onto his side, leaning over her, one hand on her thigh, holding her there. Nate set his hand on her belly--curved and soft in a way it hadn't been before she got pregnant. The stretch marks he remembered as livid purple-pink stripes were faded nearly to the same color as her skin now. Old scars. Nate kissed her there first, licking up one line, and she slid her fingers into his hair again, a gentler touch than before.

Nate made his way down, nuzzling at the neatly trimmed thatch of her dark-blonde hair, inhaling the familiar sex-smell of Cory, warm and already getting wet. She was the last woman he'd gone down on, and it had been a long time. He was a little surprised to realize he'd missed this: the soft heat of her, the smooth curve of her thigh under his hand, the smell and the taste of her. He spread her a little with his thumbs--not exactly the same as before, no, but he still knew her. When he lapped at her clit, the breathless _fuck_ that spilled from her mouth told him exactly where she was. She'd gotten ahead of him and Brad, probably got herself warmed up before they got here, but that was only fair. Ladies first.

He gave her another couple of licks, knowing she was ready for just that much stimulation, and he felt the muscles in her thighs tense. Brad mumbled something low and warm--another sound that went straight to Nate's dick. Brad's voice pitched just that low was so familiar, so much a part of sex and so weird in combination with his face in Cory's pussy that Nate was disoriented for a second. He kept going anyway, licking down her slit, nuzzling close to her clit while he licked at her lips. She was plenty wet enough, if just being ready for Brad was all she wanted, but he brought his right hand in, stroking her with a couple of fingers.

"Fucking seriously, Nate," Cory said, and Nate grinned and pushed two fingers into her, curling up to find the spot that made her hips snap up, pushing her against his mouth. Brad's hand shifted to splay across her belly, steadying her, and Nate got to work, tongue on her clit, pushing her unrelentingly as her breathing got faster. He knew her orgasm was close as much from the familiar tension of her fingers in his hair as the way she gasped out his name and then _dammit, fuck, harder_. He'd long since learned that that wasn't actually a command, and he kept doing exactly what he was doing as she tipped over, clenching down on his fingers in little spasms, wetter and wetter against his tongue. 

Nate lifted his head when Cory's hand fell away, leaving his fingers inside her while she came down. He found Brad giving him a mildly impressed look. Nate's lips were tingling, and he knew they had to be red and used-looking; he licked them pointedly and watched Brad's eyes go dark. Brad's hips jerked a little, his dick twitching, and Nate tilted his head, silently offering. _You need a warm-up too?_

Brad exhaled and shook his head silently, his eyes flicking down to Nate's mouth, and Nate knew it wasn't that Brad didn't want it, just that he was staying on-mission. Brad turned his head and kissed Cory again, soft and coaxing, and she said, "Fuck. Yeah. Where were we."

"Fucking," Brad said. "Nate gave me a whole PowerPoint presentation earlier about how you can't make babies with oral."

"Which is a good thing or I'd be knocked up already," Cory agreed, and smacked an air-kiss in Nate's direction. Nate slid his wet fingers free of her with a last teasing flutter and dropped a last kiss on her mound before he got out of the way.

Cory aimed a playful kick at him as he got up, and then she rolled over, straddling Brad. That left plenty of room on the bed for Nate, and he lay down beside them, not touching. _Now_ he was only here to watch, and he couldn't do anything else. He couldn't tear his eyes away from them as Cory ducked down into another kiss, wrapping her hand around Brad's cock as Brad's hands slid up from her hips to her breasts.

"You ready for this?" Cory asked, and Nate's gaze flicked down to Brad's cock, which was certainly ready.

"Nope," Brad said breathlessly. "But don't let that stop you."

Cory laughed a little and shook off Brad's hands, keeping hers curled around Brad's cock as she slid down onto him with a wet sound that had Nate grabbing his own cock. He watched Brad fight the urge to shove up into her, his muscles going tight and his face tense. Brad's eyes stayed on her, though, as Cory moaned and tilted her head back and worked her way down. She rocked a little, experimentally, when Brad was all the way inside her, and Nate's eyes jumped restlessly from her face to Brad's to the place where their bodies met, the bounce of her tits and the pulse throbbing in Brad's throat. 

They were both held the pose until well after the point where Nate recognized it for the game of chicken it was. Finally Brad's mouth twitched and he said, "Fuck, you already came once, you win," and shoved his hips up.

Cory laughed again and leaned forward, bracing her hands on Brad's chest, grinding down against him until Brad got his hand between their bellies. Nate could see the moment when he got his thumb on Cory's clit, the overstimulated shiver wracking her. 

"Fuck, yeah, I do win," she said, her grin sun-bright and smug. "Get some."

"Pretty sure that's your job." Brad's ass came up off the bed as he arched up, and Nate couldn't help making a low appreciative sound. 

Brad's gaze cut over to him, and Brad shot him a different promising grin as his eyes swept down Nate's body. Nate was distantly aware that his hand was moving, that he was jerking off to his very own personal porn performance, but he didn't think anybody could blame him for it.

"Be right with you," Brad said, and then he moved, rolling Cory over so that he was on top--did it perfectly, Nate noted, impressed but not remotely surprised. Cory's startled noise of irritation went straight into startled pleasure as Brad fucked into her again at another angle, his hand still working between them.

"You first," Cory gasped, one leg hooking over Brad's back, "Fuck, you first, you--"

"No problem," Brad agreed, and Nate watched the way he bit his lip, the way his whole body tightened and shook as he came, his head dropping to rest on Cory's chest for the space of a couple of heaving breaths before he did something with the hand between their bodies. He rocked his hips a little, and Cory's head tilted back on the sheets. Nate's hand tightened on his dick as he watched her face redden, scrunching up like it hurt a little the second time, and she let out a long, high sound that ended in a shaky sigh.

Nate held still, watching them, his cock aching and his balls tight. He was starting to seriously consider getting off the bed and going to the bathroom to finish himself off without disturbing them when Brad moved, kissing Cory softly and murmuring something in her ear. 

Cory snorted and shoved at his chest, nodding, and Brad turned his head to smile with all his teeth at Nate. He moved off of Cory, grabbing Nate's arm to drag him a little closer, and Nate scooted in obediently, letting Brad climb on top of him. 

"You think I forgot about you?" Brad said, kissing him, and Nate made a sound close to a whimper at Brad's body sliding over his, sex-sweaty and heavy in just the right way, Brad's softening dick pressing wetly against Nate's thigh when Nate thrust up against him.

"No," Nate said, after the first pleasant shock of contact passed. "I was sure that you had full situational awareness at all times, Sergeant." 

It was only as the words came out of his mouth that it occurred to him that ranks in bed probably sounded at least a little weird to Cory. He felt himself blush, and Brad's grin got wider, and Brad's hand closed firmly on his cock. 

"Let me just take care of this, then," Brad said against his mouth, and Nate gasped into a kiss as Brad's hand began to move. Nate was more than willing to have Brad take care of it for him, grinding against Brad. It felt like forever since they'd done this. He was hungry for touch, for the act of sex itself, even more than he wanted to come; he just wanted to be here, with Brad, riding this wave.

He tipped over the edge almost before he knew he was going to, orgasm rushing up on him all at once. Brad kept kissing him through it, until Nate was lying wrung out under him. He grinned up at Brad, who was grinning back just as widely, dazed with happiness. Nate slung an arm around Brad's neck and pushed up into another, slower kiss, and Brad settled his hands on either side of Nate's head and kissed back, letting Nate take more of his weight, starting to relax, kisses disintegrating into lazy touches.

Nate was nearly asleep when he felt a touch on his hip he couldn't immediately identify, and he opened his eyes to find Cory lying on her side facing them, one foot extended to poke Nate with her toes.

"Okay," she said, smiling wryly. "That's enough of you two being adorable in my bed. Go crash in the guest room if you want to be all gross and cuddly all night."

"Yes, ma'am," Brad mumbled, and a few seconds later he actually shifted off Nate, dragging him up off the bed as he went. They gathered up their clothes, not worrying much about who grabbed whose. Nate tossed the covers back up to the foot of the bed, and Cory made a noise that might have been _thanks_ and pulled them a little higher.

"Hey," she said when Brad was in the doorway, Nate right behind him.

Nate turned and looked back. Cory was sprawled out in the bed, the sheet pulled up to her hips in no way disguising the fact that she was sprawling over as much of the bed as it was physically possible to take up. She was smiling, sleepy and pleased with herself.

"If you guys want to go again for luck in the morning, you're cooking breakfast."

Nate grinned and nodded. He didn't have to look back at Brad to answer for both of them. "Yes, ma'am."


	4. January-May 2007

Brad called home from the semi-privacy of the plywood-stalled phones rather than using Skype in the computer room where anyone could see. If the face of the person he was talking to wasn't visible, he had some plausible deniability to cover anything he said that made it a little too obvious he was talking to his significant other. 

It was January--three months in, three months to go, and he was counting down days in a way he never had before--when he called and barely got through the usual pleasantries of the call before Nate said, "Okay, so everything with the baby is completely fine."

Brad's breath stopped. 

"Totally, completely fine, no cause for concern," Nate went on firmly, giving Brad time to start breathing again and get over the nasty jolt of the idea, always carried around at the back of his mind, that something might possibly be not-fine while he was half a world away and unable to do a damn thing about it. Not that there was anything he could do if he were there, either, except maybe, if he was lucky, be there when it happened. 

"Cory had the twenty-week ultrasound and her mom went with her," Nate said. "And they found out the sex."

"The..." Brad said, and then his head caught up. "Oh."

"Yeah," Nate said, and he sounded like he was trying not to laugh. Brad closed his eyes and smiled, letting himself picture the look on Nate's face. "They wrote it down and put it in an envelope, so I figured if you want to know, I'll open it and tell you, and if you don't want to know, I'll be surprised with you."

Brad huffed--that was so fucking _Nate_ \--and then he said, "I think there's going to be plenty of surprises left after that one. Tell me."

"Okay," Nate said. It was clear that he'd expected exactly that answer, but, being Nate, he'd still asked. 

Brad knew just from Nate's small surprised breath, even before Nate said, "Oh, shit, it's a girl. I mean--that's great, she's going to be great, I just--"

Brad knew exactly what he meant, though, because the knowledge had smacked him in the center of body mass in exactly the same way. He'd just barely managed not to catch his breath in just the same way. "What the fuck are we going to do with a girl?"

"Send her to Cory if she wants to learn to do makeup, I guess," Nate said. "The rest of it is mostly the same, right?"

"Sure," Brad said, remembering every weird and mysterious thing his sisters had ever done and told him he wouldn't understand, every time they'd gone to Mom for something they wouldn't explain. "Don't say that part when you tell my mom, okay?"

"Yeah, no, I think we can expect a lot of shit talking," Nate agreed. "Your mom, my mom--at least she'll have plenty of aunts, that'll help, right? And Cory."

"At least until she gets that transfer to the New York office," Brad said.

"God, knock wood right now, she would make you wash your mouth out if--"

"I got it, I got it," Brad said, tapping his knuckles obediently against the plywood. The transfer to the New York office was the preferred flow-chart branch in Cory's five-year plan, but it was a ways off yet. "Anyway, wherever she is, there's Skype and visits and everything."

"Yeah," Nate said, "but--she's gonna be ours, Brad. A girl. Our--our daughter."

Brad shut his eyes and leaned his forehead against the plywood. That feeling of an impact against his chest wasn't going away. This was a lot more real than the emailed photo of two lines on a pregnancy test. A daughter. _His_ daughter.

"Anyway, there you go," Nate said. "It's up to you to come up with a better name than Linus for her, that part is all yours."

"Already done," Brad said. He hadn't spent a year reading epic poetry to Linus without figuring that out, even if he hadn't known then that he was going to need it.

* * *

"And this is my baby sister's room!" Linus turned the doorknob with one hand and towed Brad after him with the other. Even though he'd been home two months ago for Linus's third birthday, Brad was still silently marveling that he was so _tall_ , that he could _open doors_ by himself. Nate had given Brad the Skype tour two weeks ago, when he and Linus moved into the new house, but Linus had insisted on showing everything to Brad as soon as he got home anyway. 

The nursery had still just been an empty white room at that point, though, and it wasn't now. The walls were, as Brad had requested, not pink. 

"Yeah," Nate had said. "That can wait until she's old enough to tell us she wants it," and Brad hadn't bothered to hope out loud that maybe she wouldn't. They had nieces. Brad had seen his future, and it was pink.

For now, the nursery was a sort of middle shade between blue and purple instead, a twilight-sky color that Brad found himself liking even before he saw the little design of yellow moon and stars painted above the crib. 

He looked back at Nate, who just raised his eyebrows in a slightly challenging expression. _Tell me I'm wrong_.

Brad shook his head slightly, smiling, and then picked Linus up, hoisting him over his shoulder. "So if this is your baby sister's room, where's your baby sister? Did you hide her somewhere?"

"Nooo," Linus said, giggling. "She's in Mommy's belly, you and Daddy have to go get her tomorrow."

"Oh, is that what we're doing tomorrow?" Brad said. "And then we're going to bring her back and you're going to take care of her while me and Daddy hang out with Grandma and Grandpa, right?"

" _No_ ," Linus said, squirming through Brad's grip until he was mostly upside down. "I go with Grandma and Grandpa."

"Oh, I get it," Brad hauled Linus up by his legs--God, he was getting heavy--and looked him in the eyes upside down. "The baby will take care of me and Daddy, huh?" 

Linus shook his head, swinging a little in Brad's grip. "You have to take care of _her_ , she's just _little_."

"Ohhh, okay," Brad said. "So we'll go get her from Mommy and bring her home and take care of her, and you hang out with Grandma and Grandpa for a while, right?"

" _Right_ ," Linus said, exasperated and also starting to turn red from being upside down. He sounded so much like Nate it was kind of scary sometimes. "Maybe two sleeps or three sleeps, until the baby gets used to living at our house instead of in Mommy's belly."

"Hey," Nate said, coming around Brad to grab Linus, and Brad let him go so Nate could flip him down to his feet. "How about you go get the thing you made for the baby and show Dad?"

"It's a picture!" Linus yelled helpfully and darted out of the room.

" _Walk_ on the stairs," Nate called after him, the exact intonation Brad had already heard Nate use in the middle of every Skype call they'd had in the last two weeks.

"I'm walking," Linus yelled back, and they heard the slow, deliberate stomp of his feet going down. That part never carried through on Skype; Brad only got to hear it because he was here. _Home_. A house in Maryland, now, instead of an apartment in Cambridge.

Brad reached out to pull Nate in for a short kiss--both of them still listening to that steady thump of feet on the stairs--and they stayed there, arms around each other, leaning in. 

"So I was right about the moon, huh," Nate said. 

Brad grinned and didn't say anything. He'd never said, but he'd dropped a couple of hints, and he'd known Nate would catch them.

"If you're naming our daughter Artemis," Nate said, "even as a middle name, you never get to say another word about Ulysses."

Brad snorted. "I am not naming her Artemis. Even as a middle name. And no matter what I name her Ulysses remains exactly as questionable a choice as it always was."

"He's doing fine with it so far," Nate said calmly. "But about the rest of her name...."

Brad shut his eyes and leaned a little harder into Nate. They'd had this conversation before. Of course, _of course_ , there was a part of Brad that wanted to change his mind even now. He was grateful Nate hadn't actually said, _Are you sure_ , because he wished he weren't.

But he'd already spent nine months, six of them out of country, swallowing everything he wanted to say about the baby on the way. He'd already spent three years pretending he wasn't one of the dads in any group he stood in, pretending he was single even as the whole idea of it became harder to fathom. He'd spent years not telling anyone he had someone to go home to, a kid waiting for him, another kid on the way-- _his daughter_ \--

He couldn't change that, though. He couldn't change any of it, so it had to go the way they'd already agreed it would.

"Her name's gonna be Fick," Brad said quietly. "You're going to be her father. It's the only thing that makes sense, Nate. You have custody, you have to--"

"I know," Nate said quietly, and kept on mercifully not giving him the chance to change his mind. It hadn't been a long conversation, even the first time. 

"Cory and I talked about it, though, about later. She put together all the paperwork. She has friends who handle this stuff, so if you ever want to change that-- _anytime_ \--you'll be her father too. Hers and Linus's both. We've got it all drawn up, all you'd have to do is sign the forms and get it filed. Cory gives up her rights and you adopt them."

Brad shivered, and Nate's arms tightened around him, steadying him. 

"It's not forever," Nate said quietly. "One way or another--they're your kids, Brad. That is a fact, and it's going to be legal as soon as you're ready for it to be."

The adoption would be a matter public record, of course, impossible to keep entirely secret. It wasn't like Brad hadn't researched the options in the last couple of years. But if he needed to be sure more than he needed to protect himself, Nate and Cory would back him.

"Her last name is still going to be Fick," Brad said quietly, turning his head to kiss the point of Nate's jaw. "It sounds better with Diana."

* * *

She was screaming--red-faced and damp and naked--when the doctors handed her over the surgical drape to Brad to hold for the first time, and she was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen. They laughed, Brad and Nate and Cory, and agreed that she was going to be a furious, ferocious little battle-goddess. Cory and Nate both cried when Brad introduced them officially to Diana Corinne Fick. Brad's voice stayed steady through the words he'd rehearsed silently a thousand times, and if his eyes were wet, that was how dads were about their daughters. No one could blame him. 

Also he hadn't told Cory about Diana's middle name in advance, and she punched him on the arm, _hard_. That was worth a little involuntary eye-watering.

"Don't let anybody ever tell you you get your violent streak from me," Brad said, bouncing Diana in the familiar, instinctive rhythm he remembered from that first week he'd spent with Linus. She screamed anyway, but he figured she was new and he was rusty at this; they'd get the hang of it. "That is your mom's doing."

Diana wailed. Brad grinned down at her, and Nate leaned into his side and rubbed his thumb along her cheek, and Cory told the nurse to take a picture. Everything was perfect.

* * *

Diana was also screaming when Brad's parents brought Linus to meet her. Linus smiled gamely for photos--they had to take endless combinations of parents and kids and family members, and one where Linus sat in the visitor's armchair with pillows propping his arms and Diana draped, wailing and red-faced, across his lap. Linus put one hand gently on her downy head and wrapped the other arm around her middle, smiling with all his teeth.

As soon as the photo was taken he looked down with an extremely dubious expression--the flash went off twice more--while patting her tentatively on the head. 

"Daddy?" He looked up, possibly in search of rescue. "Does she miss Mommy?"

"Maybe," Nate said, scooping Diana up and cuddling her close. She quieted down slightly, and Brad leaned around to pick Linus up--God, he was huge next to her, or she was tiny, or both. "She has a lot of new people to meet, it's probably a little bit scary. She'll get used to us."

Linus nodded against Brad's shoulder, but he also held on firmly to any adult who wasn't holding Diana for the rest of the visit, and he definitely didn't object at all to leaving with his grandparents when it was time to go.

* * *

Four hours after they got her home, it was becoming obvious that the screaming really was a personality trait. She slept sometimes, but never more than an hour at a time. If she was awake and not eating, she was screaming, and sometimes she still tried to multitask, whimpering in her sleep or turning her head in the middle of a feed to yell about something until they got the bottle plugged back in and she deigned to eat a little more.

"Linus wasn't like this," Nate observed. They'd both slept all right last night, knowing it might be the last time for a while; so far the screaming was just sort of fascinating in a terrible way, like watching an ambush through a scope. "I mean, he took a few days to settle into a rhythm, but he didn't cry like this."

They were sitting on the floor, watching her lie on a blanket and cry. She had stopped crying for almost ten minutes when they first put her down, but something had set her off again before she quite managed to fall asleep. She'd screamed bloody murder when either of them tried to hold her, this last round, so they were waiting to see if she would settle back down.

"Would you have wanted a second one if Linus had been like this?" Brad asked, morbidly fascinated. 

Nate snorted. "I wouldn't have been _alive_ if Linus had been like this."

Brad tilted his head, acknowledging the point, and found that he had very abruptly reached the point where he couldn't sit and watch her cry anymore. He picked her up and squeezed her tight, tucking her face against his shoulder with his hand cupping the back of her head. Her wails snuffled out into quick, quiet breathing.

Nate slumped back against the couch beside him, patting his leg but saying nothing to break the sudden silence. Brad held absolutely still, breathing evenly, and hoped with every fiber of his being that this time she would fall asleep.

* * *

At ten, when it was Nate's turn to go to bed--Brad was going to take the night shift and sleep in the mornings--the house looked like a hurricane had hit it. They were both wearing shirts decorated with spit-up milk and clammy with sweat. Diana was fighting with a bottle, and Nate circled the room, picking up spit cloths, empty bottles, dishes and glasses.

He stopped in the doorway, looking around at the chaos, bewildered. "I swear this was easier with Linus. I mean, even aside from the crying, I stayed totally on top of everything. I was on my own and I still...."

"You're spending a lot more energy being a person this time," Brad pointed out. 

Nate looked enlightened for a second, and then smiled a little sheepishly. "Yeah. Guess so."

"You gonna be able to sleep?"

Nate's smile stayed right where it was. "Nope. But I'll lie down and pretend, and tomorrow I'll probably be tired enough."

Brad nodded, and Nate took his armload of stuff to the kitchen. Brad experimented with rocking Diana slightly while--no, that just got him more screaming.

"Sorry," he murmured to her. "Sorry, okay, I will hold still, I will hold totally still, just--I know you're hungry, take the bottle, okay?"

He distantly registered the sound of Nate going upstairs under Diana's wailing, and the first thing he noticed, in the quiet after she finally accepted the bottle again, was that he didn't hear the shower. He considered going upstairs to check whether Nate had just lain down on the floor in his dirty clothes to sleep after all. He had to weigh his curiosity against the odds that Nate would take his coming upstairs as some kind of cause for alarm that would obliterate all chance of rest.

Nate's footsteps came back down the stairs. He walked over to Brad and leaned against his back, carefully not touching or jostling Diana. 

"I miss Linus," Nate said really quietly.

Because, of course, before he'd gone to take a shower Nate had automatically gone to check on Linus, and Linus wasn't there. They'd talked to him on Skype two hours ago. He'd be home in a couple of days and it would be unfair to him and Diana both to have him home right now when they had the option of letting him be somewhere else. 

But Brad thought of the empty bed upstairs and tilted his head back against Nate's, keeping a weather eye on Diana to see whether she was going to freak out again. "Me too."

* * *

Nate looked tired but basically eager to take his shift when he came downstairs again at six. Diana was, naturally, screaming directly into Brad's left ear while he tried to burp her. 

"She got to ninety minutes a couple times," Brad said, waving toward the log scribbled in deteriorating handwriting in the notebook on the coffee table. "And then she screamed for two hours straight, I don't even know how she did that. Physically, I didn't know that was possible."

"She's your daughter," Nate said, with a little smile that indicated how very, very much he was going to enjoy saying that to Brad for _the rest of their lives_.

"Yeah," Brad sighed, right before she burped, very wetly, all over his shoulder and started crying even louder.

Nate mopped up and took her, and Brad made his escape. Showering was every bit as wonderful as he'd imagined it being for the last six hours--hot water, clean skin, _no screaming_ \--but by the time he got into the bedroom and lay down it was starting to be weird not to be holding Diana, or watching her, or at least hearing her yell.

Insomnia had never been Brad's problem, so it was honestly baffling to be still awake half an hour later, staring at the ceiling, straining for any sound of Diana's crying past the white noise generator. Of course he wouldn't hear her even if she was crying--which she probably was by now, if she'd been quiet when he got out of the shower--but....

"I miss Diana," Brad said out loud, and then he sighed and got up. She actually _wasn't_ crying, when he shut off the white noise, and he walked very softly down the stairs, whose creaks he was already learning. Nate was stretched out on the floor, and Diana was asleep on a blanket beside him. 

Brad smiled, and then walked softly past both of them and stretched out on the couch. He was asleep almost before he put his head down.

He half-surfaced again and again over the next six hours--Diana crying, Diana crying, and then Nate saying, "Just hold still a sec," and a small, warm weight settling in the small of Brad's back. 

Brad held still, and Diana stayed asleep. He was asleep himself before it occurred to him to wonder where Nate had gone.

When he woke up properly, at one, Diana was crying again--of course she was, it was what Diana did--and Nate had sent the photo to his phone. In it, Diana was briefly asleep, curled up like a cat on his back.

* * *

Diana cried all the way through their afternoon Skype call with Linus; they took turns walking her around upstairs while the other talked to Linus downstairs.

"I can stay longer with Grandma and Grandpa," Linus said after Brad had heard all about the adventures Linus had had at the Air and Space Museum that morning. "I don't think Diana knows how to not cry so much yet."

Brad smiled. "That one's going to take her a long time to learn, little man. You'll have to come home before then."

"Yeah," Linus said, dragging the word out. "But not _yet_."

"Not today," Brad agreed, and then the timer dinged and he said, "You want to talk to Daddy again?"

Linus nodded quickly and said, "I love you, Dad! Bye bye!" before Brad could stand up. He always said it all in one breath like that; it was one of the first sentences he'd learned, from hearing Nate say it for him all the time. 

It took Brad a minute before he could smile and say, "I love you too, little man," and get up and go find Nate to tell him it was his turn.

* * *

Two hours in an enclosed space with a screaming infant demonstrated definitively that Diana was not susceptible to the driving trick. By the end of the drive it was a miracle that Brad hadn't crashed the car just to win an argument. He and Nate were furious past the point of words with each other on about five separate counts by the time they got home again, including whose fault it was that Brad had accidentally started driving toward the apartment Nate had lived in when Linus was born when Nate said _fuck it, let's go home_.

* * *

Nate didn't hesitate about going to bed that night. Brad looked down at Diana, asleep in the swing but already frowning and wiggling around, getting ready to wake up and cry all of fifteen minutes after she'd fallen asleep. He shook his head. "I love you, princess, but you gotta quit this. We can't keep doing this, I'm serious."

Diana squirmed a little more, still frowning, and Brad bit back an argument--like a sleeping three-day-old had anything to contribute to this conversation. He sat down, instead, eyeing the stack of parenting books on the coffee table. None of them looked likely to have a chapter on what Brad needed to know: _your kid is an asshole because you gave her terrible genes, here's how to survive without fucking her up worse_. 

"Sorry, baby girl," Brad said. He wanted to be able to kiss her or cuddle her when he said it, but he already knew that touching her would just set off the inevitable screaming sooner than absolutely necessary. He opened his laptop instead and started googling.

* * *

The concrete floor of the basement laundry room was not, by a long shot, the least comfortable place Brad had slept in his life. When he opened his eyes on the sight of Nate staring down at him in bemusement, barely lit by the kitchen light filtering down from upstairs, he thought it might even be his favorite.

Brad raised his hand, before Nate could ask the obvious question, and pressed his palm against the blanket-wrapped bit of Diana accessible from the leg hole of the baby backpack she was tucked down into. It was her feet, but when he pushed gently against them she reflexively pushed back.

"Yeah," Brad said. "She's alive."

Nate nodded slowly and looked in fascination and possibly some horror at the way Brad had attached the baby backpack to the front of the washing machine. Setting her on top hadn't worked at all, so he'd had to get a little bit creative. He hadn't wanted to risk her falling; maybe he hadn't needed quite that _much_ duct tape, but she'd been crying continuously for an hour and a half by the time he got to this idea. He'd been in no mood to be sparing.

"She gets kind of annoyed the first time the water goes off, but if you run it again right away she doesn't wake up," Brad said, keeping his palm pressed against her feet. "And the second time she doesn't notice."

"Did you get her to sleep for two hours straight?" Nate asked, sounding awed.

"Three, the first time," Brad said. "Coming up on an hour and a half now. She still cries like a fucking banshee when she's up, but once she's changed and fed you wrap her up, get her in the backpack, turn on the washer, and in about two minutes she stops crying and is still breathing, so I'm assuming she's asleep. Maybe she's just plotting revenge in there, I'm not asking any questions."

Nate covered his face with both hands for a few seconds, and then he dropped down to hands and knees and kissed Brad with minty-fresh passion. Brad pushed up on one elbow and kissed him back, and long before he came up for air he was sure they were never going to speak of yesterday's car trip again.

Nate folded down the rest of the way, stretching out to lie on the floor with him. When he reached up toward Diana Brad guided his hand into place against her feet, and they lay together in the quiet for as long as it lasted.


	5. December 22, 2010

Brad made himself wait. He got into the truck, got through the gates, and he didn't touch his phone. He was tempted to turn in at the McDonald's, but it shared a parking lot with the PX; he kept going, eyes front. He let nothing show even now, alone, speeding down the highway. 

Once he was across the Jeff Davis Highway he pulled his phone out. Even then he didn't let himself look--he didn't even light up the screen to see what notifications were showing--until he'd pulled onto 95 and was absolutely, definitively, in civilian country. He unlocked his phone without looking and pulled up his texts, scrolling down to the earliest one.

Nate had gotten in first--he had to have been watching on C-SPAN. He'd probably have finagled his way into being at the damn signing if he wasn't still protecting Brad. All Nate's text said was _One step closer._

Cory's, less carefully guarded, had come in only a few minutes later. _FUCKING FINALLY!!!!!_

After that there were a dozen more--from his mom, Nate's dad, various sisters, from Holly, the former Marine who'd been Linus's babysitter up in Cambridge. They were all variations of the same excited congratulations. Ray's message required Brad to squint in momentary concentration, deciphering the string of little pictures--bells, a church, two brides, two guys holding hands, cake, presents, a microphone. He was a little depressed to realize that he knew exactly what Ray meant: wedding planning; insert joke here about who was wearing white; Ray was working on his speech. No response was required.

Brad scrolled back down to Nate's name instead and sent a saved quick-text, feeling the same little thrill he always did when he tapped on it. _My turn to pick up tonight, right?_

Nate responded almost instantly with a quick-text of his own, and Brad could picture the flurry of work he was trying to cram into this last hour of the day to make up for being distracted earlier. _Roger that_.

Brad smiled and put his phone back into his pocket.

* * *

He got out of the car when he got to the daycare and took Diana's booster seat from where it was stashed in the trunk, camouflaged by an empty duffel bag and a spare fleece. He walked around to buckle it in and then stopped, staring at it, after it was fastened in place. 

"Hi, Dad!" Linus called from behind him, and Brad turned.

Linus was leaning out the door, holding Diana's hand. Diana wasn't waving or calling out, and Brad shut the truck's door and crossed over to the door to collect them from under the teacher's watchful gaze. Brad waved to her so she could check them off as picked up by the correct person. She waved back while Linus towed Diana out through the door Brad held open from them.

"Deecie had a bad day," Linus announced, still holding Diana's hand, although Diana yanked against his grip when he said that. 

Brad took her other hand so she could let go of Linus while they crossed the parking lot, and she looked up at him with a mulish expression he knew way too well. "I did _not_ have a bad day and I didn't _fight_. I _didn't hit anybody_."

Diana had a shirt on under her half-zipped jacket that didn't match her pants. Her hair, which had been in pigtails this morning, was now falling down in fine blond waves, pulled back with a couple of purple plastic barrettes Brad didn't recognize. That looked like sympathy from a teacher, which meant whatever happened really probably hadn't been the result of her starting shit. That was something.

"I'm glad you didn't hit anybody," Brad told her. 

"And I didn't have a _bad day_ , Blankie."

"Okay, Deece," Linus said, and he shot Brad a long-suffering look, one put-upon adult to another, not even stooping to argue with his least-favorite of Diana's names for him. He was going to be fucking insufferable from the ages of twelve to twenty-two, but for now he was six and a half and it was still mostly cute. Mostly.

"Diana can tell me how her day went in her own words, little man. Go get buckled up."

Linus nodded and dashed around to the other side of the truck while Brad opened the door on the passenger side and picked Diana up to put her in her seat. She threw her arms around his neck and held on tight, and Brad shifted his grip to hug her, backpack and all. He heard the crinkle of a plastic bag inside--holding the shirt she'd been wearing this morning, he was sure--and filed that away.

"I wanna go home, Dad," Diana said into his shoulder.

"Well, today's your lucky day, princess." Brad hugged her tighter. "We're not even taking a detour to sell your brother to a circus."

* * *

Nate was home already when they got there; the house was bright and warm and full of the smell of pizza, and Nate met them at the door, smiling with none of the restraint of his text messages. He ruffled Linus's hair as Linus breezed past, intent on his arriving-home-from-school routine. Nate took Diana from Brad's arms, leaving him in possession of her backpack. Brad saw him clock the new hairdo and changed shirt, but Nate didn't ask her anything, just gave her a hug and said, "Go wash your hands and tell Linus we can have dinner as soon as you two are ready."

Diana was already yelling, "Lino! It's almost time for dinner!" as soon as her feet hit the floor. She pounded up the stairs after him while Linus was yelling at her not to yell in the house.

Brad ignored everything but Nate stepping into his arms, a grin on his face, and they kissed at the front door until pounding feet thundered back down to them. Brad turned his head to tell them to be careful on the stairs, only to see both kids had stopped three steps up, and Linus was holding on to Diana with one hand and the railing with the other.

"Well, come on," Brad said, letting go of Nate. "You're not eating dinner on the stairs."

The kids came the rest of the way down the stairs--walking, now that they were actually being watched--and Nate and Brad fell in behind them as they headed for the kitchen table, which was already set with plates and glasses. Nate went to get the pizza out of the oven where it was keeping warm while Brad grabbed milk from the fridge for the kids and beers for himself and Nate. 

"Pizza on a Wednesday, huh?" Brad said, as Nate turned toward him. Nate grinned, ears turning a little pink. 

"I got distracted," Nate said, waving toward the living room, and Brad looked and saw the laptop and papers spread all over the coffee table, obvious evidence that Nate had been working from home. "Anyway, we're celebrating."

"Yeah?" Brad said, glancing over at Nate as he poured the milk. "What are we celebrating?"

It had to be way too soon to say anything to the kids; there hadn't been any official word on base today, and they already knew it wasn't going to work like that.

"Well, you're still not celebrating because you have to go to work tomorrow," Nate said, setting the pizza boxes down, opening them and taking out a slice of pepperoni for Diana, green pepper and onion for Linus. "But the rest of us are on Christmas vacation."

Brad sat down, grabbed his own slices of pizza--one of each--and said thoughtfully, "That does mean I don't have to get any little monkeys dressed and fed before I can get out the door tomorrow morning."

That led to predictable cheerful monkey noises from both kids until Nate said, "Okay, okay, dig in, monkeys," and Diana commenced carefully picking all the pepperonis off her pizza to eat separately while Linus scrutinized his slice to decide whether he was in a toppings-first or crust-first mood. 

"So how was your day, dear?" Brad asked. The ironic dutifulness of the question, after six years, had worn into simple habit, but it still made Nate smile at him in just the same way.

"Well, I talked to approximately everyone I know on the phone today, so not the most productive, but I kind of figured," Nate said. 

"Did you talk to Mommy?" Diana asked, looking up.

"I talked to your mom, my mom, _and_ Dad's mom," Nate replied. "I even talked to Uncle Ray's mom. Everybody wanted to talk to me today."

Brad turned his eyes down to his food, eating while Nate went over the catalog of every single person he'd talked to with Diana and Linus, never telling them a word about what everyone had wanted to talk to him about. Brad and Nate had managed to keep the kids in a bubble so far, never really letting them notice how many secrets they kept or why. 

Brad watched the kids eat and thought about how it was routine now, seeing them every night and every morning. He'd been coming home nearly every night for a year now. He had two more years of this guaranteed, and with the way the wars were winding down, even after his three-year assignment at Quantico he probably wouldn't be deployed again before his twenty years were up. He wouldn't go far from them--probably just down to Lejeune again.

In two years it would really all be over. In two years he could ask Nate to consider moving the kids down to North Carolina for a year or two. They could all live together, officially, on the same street with other senior NCO families; Linus and Diana could go to school with the kids of guys he worked with. Even if Nate needed to stay in DC--even if they didn't want to uproot the kids--they could visit, they could come down during vacations....

Nate squeezed his shoulder and Brad realized that he'd stood up to get more milk for Diana; Brad kept forgetting she actually drank more than a little cupful at meals now. He shook off the speculation and focused on the kids. Diana was counting out her pepperonis, and Linus was watching her like he was about to either scold her or tattle about whatever had happened earlier, so Brad figured he'd better head him off. Debriefings went better when the kids' blood sugar was topped off--they'd learned that much by now.

"Christmas vacation, little man. How you gonna keep yourself busy all week?"

Linus's face scrunched up in thought as he considered. Brad grabbed another slice of pizza while he awaited an answer. 

"Probably Legos," Linus said finally, in a cautiously forecasting tone, and Brad only saw Nate's suppressed laughter in the twitch of his shoulder as he poured the milk.

* * *

After dinner, while Linus was lying on the floor playing his allotted twenty minutes of Angry Birds on Brad's phone, Nate coaxed Diana into his lap and asked her what had happened at school.

"I didn't fight," Diana said, but by now the stubbornness had gone out of her. She was curled up as small as possible against Nate's chest, and her voice wobbled. 

Brad, sitting on the floor next to Nate's legs so he could keep an eye on what Linus was doing with his phone, turned his head but didn't look directly at either of them.

Nate patiently coaxed the rest of the story out of her: Sophia, who Diana had been trying to be best buddies with since about Halloween, had declined to share some paints. Although Diana had not hit her or even snatched the paints away from her--Brad mentally filled in a lot of three-year-old girl drama for those insistent negatives--Sophia had still taken offense. In the ensuing scuffle which had not included any actual hitting, Diana wound up with paint on her panda shirt from the San Diego Zoo.

"My shirt that _Grandpa bought for me at the zoo_ ," Diana wailed. "She _wrecked it_. I just wanted to _share_."

Brad squeezed Nate's knee--he seemed to be covering the requirement for as much cuddling and soothing murmurs as Diana would take--and stood up. 

Diana's backpack was still where Brad had left it, hung on the coat rack by the front door. Brad fished out the plastic bag with the damp red t-shirt inside and took it into the kitchen. He found, when he opened the bag, that it wasn't really that bad. It was kids' paint, water-based, and the teacher had obviously rinsed most of the paint off before it could dry. There were still some remnants of blue around the collar seam and adorning the white of the panda bear, but it would probably be fine with just a trip through the washing machine. 

Brad ran it under cold water, scraping at paint with his thumbnail. He tried not to listen to Diana's little voice going up and down, interspersed with the patient low steadiness of Nate's voice comforting her. He startled a little at pressure against his side, and looked down to see Linus leaning bodily against him, peering at Brad's hands in the sink.

Brad shifted the angle of his arm so Linus could fit under his elbow more easily. Linus looked up at him and said, "Can I help?"

"I've got this," Brad said, keeping his eyes on the t-shirt, gently scrubbing blue off the white patches. "How about you tell me why you were in such a big hurry to tell me Diana had a bad day?"

Linus turned his head in, half-hiding his face against Brad's hip, but he spoke clearly enough when he said, "I didn't know it was like that. I thought she was mad. She wouldn't talk to anybody and Miss Hannah came and got me because she said Deece was asking for me, but she wouldn't talk to me either and she was sitting in the corner and doing--" 

Linus shifted slightly away from Brad to fold his arms in a pointed defensive posture, one they all knew well.

"No hugs. So I told her I would fix her hair because it was messed up a little bit and she likes it when you and Daddy fix her hair, even when she's mad. But I couldn't get it back how it was so her teacher gave me those barrettes for her and she complained about how I messed it up worse and then she was talking again and she told me to go away so she could go to music circle. But nobody told me why, I just thought she was mad. I thought she didn't want to talk about it."

Brad had a deeply weird mental image of what it might have been like, when he'd been an inarticulately angry little kid, to have had a big brother instead of little sisters--someone like Linus, like _Nate_ \--who would come and sit with him and calm him down, give him something manageable to be angry at. He had one of those weird, arrested moments he had from time to time, looking at the kids. _I think you're going to be okay._

Brad wrung the shirt out gently and looked it over, then shut the faucet off. He ruffled Linus's red-blond hair with one damp hand and said, "You're a good brother, you know that? Here, go show Diana."

Linus bolted for the living room with the wet shirt in his outstretched hand. "Deecie, look, Dad fixed it!"

* * *

The kids went to bed without much of a struggle, though Diana plaintively asked for each of them to read her a story before they turned the lights out. It wasn't a school night, so they didn't bother keeping to the usual time limit on the bedtime ritual, and Linus didn't complain about the delay before Brad came in to read to him. They were on _Prince Caspian_ now, and Nate and Brad had finally reached a ceasefire where Nate didn't bitch about correct reading order and Brad didn't argue with the Christian allegory. 

Brad looked in on Diana again after he left Linus, but she was already fast asleep, sprawled out across five of the eight stuffed animals she required for company at night. Brad went in to kiss the top of her head and then he could finally, finally talk to Nate.

Nate was on the couch, feet up on the coffee table which was _still_ covered with all kinds of papers. He had the TV remote in his hand, and the image on the screen was already cued up to the Vice President standing at a podium. Brad sat down a little harder than he meant to next to Nate.

"You want to watch the whole thing?" Nate said. "It goes on for a while."

"Cut to the chase," Brad said, shaking his head slightly, eyes fixed on the TV.

Nate obediently fast-forwarded the recording through the Vice President talking and the President appearing. The camera was set so that he was flanked the whole time by the red Marine Corps flag, a slice of the eagle, globe and anchor at his side while he talked. Even in fast forward Brad recognized Eric Alva when the camera cut to him, standing there with the President. 

Nate hit play a few seconds after that, and he must have practiced this--or just watched it about six hundred times, sitting here alone today and not getting any work done--because the sound came on exactly as the President said, " _I say to all Americans, gay or straight, who want nothing more than to defend this country in uniform: Your country needs you, your country wants you, and we will be honored to welcome you into the ranks of the finest military the world has ever known._ "

The people in the room cheered, and Brad said faintly, "Jesus, I didn't even vote for him."

He saw Nate's grin in the corner of his eye, and he reached out and hauled Nate in tight against his side. Nate snuggled a little closer, put his head on Brad's shoulder. The President was telling a story about his visit to Afghanistan, and a woman soldier there who'd told him to get this done. He'd gotten it done. 

"Fuck," Brad said, feeling dazed as the fact sunk in. This had actually really happened today. "Do I have to vote for him next time?"

"Vote your conscience, just like always," Nate said blandly, and Brad shoved his hip into him at the same time he kept his arm tight around Nate's shoulders.

The president was still talking, and Brad could hardly take in the words. It was happening; it had happened, hours ago. Implementation still had to wait, regs hadn't changed instantly today, but it had happened. Don't Ask Don't Tell was repealed, and now everything changed. 

The President said, " _And now, it is my honor to sign this bill into law._ ," and Brad stared like it was a high-speed car chase, watching him pick up and use twenty different ceremonial pens for one signature, smiling and calling back a few times to people in the crowd calling out to him. Finally the President stood, slapped his hand down on the bill, and said, " _This is done_."

It was done. 

"Nate," Brad said. He felt a breathless urgency in his chest, wanting to crush Nate against him, wanting to go upstairs and get the kids, to--

To run the last five yards. To have his arms around his family in public, in front of God and everyone, and know they were his, and here, and safe.

"Nate," Brad said. "I want the papers. I want to adopt the kids. Now. Today, I'm not waiting a year or whatever--"

Nate shifted away from him. Brad's arm tightened reflexively, not wanting to let Nate go, but Nate just leaned forward to pull something out from under the drift of stuff on the table. Brad recognized the sheaf of forms he came back with, adorned with Cory's favorite yellow post-it flags.

"I figured," Nate said, putting them in Brad's lap along with a pen. "Here."

Nate shut his laptop and offered it to Brad as a writing surface, and Brad leaned across it to kiss him frantically, because of course Nate had figured. Of course Nate had been ready for this.

"You just have to sign where the flags are," Nate said. "Cory's coming down tomorrow, she'll sign them and see if she can get them filed before end of business, but it might be Monday, okay? And then we'll have to get a court date for the official--"

Brad kissed him again, and Nate let go of the laptop this time and held on while he kissed Brad back, hard and fiercely happy. 

"You remember when you brought Linus to Devon?" Brad said softly. "Just so you could kiss me on the tarmac?"

"Yeah," Nate said, smiling, still holding on to Brad's shoulder and the back of his neck. "I try to remember the part on the tarmac more than the flights."

"This is better than that," Brad said. It felt the same, but more. It wasn't just once. This was for good.


	6. September 20, 2011

"Come on, little man, wake up."

Linus opened his eyes and found Dad sitting on the edge of his bed. The sky was still dark outside Linus's window, but the light was on in the hall, enough for him to see that Dad was already in uniform. 

"Do you hafta go?" Linus asked, pushing himself up in case Dad wanted to give him a hug and kiss goodbye. 

Dad did pull him into a hug, but he said, "No, we're just having breakfast early today. Daddy's making pancakes, you don't want to miss that, right?"

Linus leaned against Dad's chest and shook his head in agreement. Pancakes were special, though, and they didn't have special breakfasts on school days. Something weird was going on.

"Come on," Dad said again, standing up and pulling Linus up with him, swinging him up into the air. 

Linus giggled a little, unable to help it, and Dad set him on his feet and pointed him toward the door. "Get washed up and you can go help Daddy with the pancakes, okay?"

"Okay," Linus agreed, because pancakes sounded good even if his stomach was starting to twist up wondering what was going to happen.

He went into the bathroom, peed and washed up and brushed his teeth. When he came out the door to DC's room was open, and Dad was sitting on the edge of her bed, talking quietly to her and coaxing her to wake up. Linus stood in the doorway for a minute, watching Dad. Dad didn't look especially happy or sad or weird in any way Linus could put his finger on, but it was usually pretty hard to tell from looking at Dad--not like Daddy. Linus was good at telling when Daddy was upset, and Daddy never hid it when he was happy. 

DC flailed out with both hands, trying to push Dad away, and Dad dodged easily and finally smiled a little bit. Linus smiled too, full of relief at the sight of Dad smiling. 

"Deecie, come on, your turn in the bathroom!"

DC half sat up to yell, "Get out of my room, Blankie!"

"I'm not in your room, I'm in the hallway," Linus argued. 

DC clambered out of her bed, crawling right across Dad to do it, and ran up to the doorway to check that Linus's toes weren't on the purple carpet that marked her room. They weren't. Linus knew better than that.

Dad was right behind her, and he gave her a little push when she opened her mouth to argue with Linus. "Go on, princess, get washed up for breakfast."

She gave Linus a push in turn instead of just going around him when she came through the door, but she went.

Dad turned Linus around with a hand on his shoulder, walking him down the hall past the bathroom door. "You head down and help Daddy, okay, little man?"

Linus nodded, but Dad didn't let go of his shoulder right away. When Linus looked up, Dad was looking down at him, wearing his most unreadable face. Linus's stomach felt funny again. Something was definitely very weird.

"You're getting big," Dad said. "Not gonna be the little man forever."

Linus bit his lip and wanted to ask again if Dad had to go away--maybe not today but soon? Did Dad think Linus would be big before Dad got back? Maybe all grown up? That was a scary thought.

"I'm still littler than you, Dad."

Dad's face relaxed into a smile and he squeezed Linus's shoulder. "Yeah, you are. Go help Daddy, I'll bring your sister down in a minute."

He let go this time, so Linus headed down the stairs and into the kitchen. All the lights were on and Daddy was standing at the stove, watching the pancakes on the griddle. Linus could smell bacon in the oven, and there was a bowl of fruit all cut up on the counter, and this wasn't even a _Saturday_ breakfast, this was just _weird_.

"Daddy?" Linus said. He sounded like a little kid, like DC.

Daddy turned and he smiled instantly, big and wide and excited, so it couldn't be anything bad. It couldn't be Dad going away at all. Daddy hated it when Dad had to go away.

"Set the table for me, okay, buddy?" 

Linus nodded and took the stack of plates from the counter, setting them out while he considered Daddy's smile and Dad asking him about not being little. He found himself remembering the time Daddy and Dad sat him down and told him he was going to have a baby sister. 

_Oh_ , he thought, smiling at having figured it out. _This again_.

* * *

Nate felt a little bad about dragging the kids out of bed early when Diana came downstairs holding Brad's hand, yawning and looking around the kitchen owlishly. She did argue with Linus about what kind of juice she wanted with breakfast, but she would have done that even if she were fast asleep. 

He and Brad had planned to tell the kids after dinner, but they'd both woken up an hour and a half early, lying in bed like kids on Christmas morning. They'd lasted about twenty minutes before they caved and decided to just get the kids up too, feed them breakfast and tell them immediately. Nate wasn't a hundred percent sure how it was going to go--he knew that any change could lead to a screaming meltdown, even if he thought it was good news, and this could get complicated to explain. But if things went horribly wrong he could be late to work today, stay with the kids until they'd settled enough to go to school. He didn't have anything impossible to reschedule this morning, and if anybody wanted to know why....

He could tell them. Nate grinned down at the pancakes, dishing the last ones onto the plate from the oven. Brad kissed the back of his neck on his way to get the cran-grape juice that was all Diana wanted to drink this week despite Linus's insistence that it wasn't breakfast juice. Whatever that meant.

They sat down and let the kids start on breakfast; getting into anything major on an empty stomach was just begging for it to go as badly as possible. Nate forced himself to eat once he'd cut up Diana's pancakes; the kids weren't the only ones vulnerable to their blood sugar, even if he and Brad were somewhat better at powering through it. Brad smirked at him over his coffee, but when Nate raised an eyebrow he shrugged and started eating his pancakes.

Diana was gradually waking up as she ate, alternately spearing fruit and bites of pancake on her fork. Linus, who had looked pretty wide awake from the start, had an increasingly smug look of being in on a secret, which Nate was about ninety percent certain he was mistaken about. Neither of the kids had ever asked why they had the rules they had; Linus just liked knowing all the rules, following them, and insisting that Diana follow them too. Nate hadn't had to explain DADT to him any more than he'd had to explain seatbelt laws. 

Diana, on the other hand, required frequent explanations of seatbelt laws, traffic laws, basic consideration for other people, and why violence was never the answer to anything that happened at school. Nate had learned to give that explanation without feeling like much of a hypocrite, although he still had to look away when it was Brad's turn to have that talk with her. Brad actually did better with it, though. It was one of those things he understood about Diana in an innate way that Nate never had.

Even Diana had never noticed the rules that they had because of DADT, though. She probably would have in another year or two; Linus had been five or six when he started paying attention, but he still hadn't asked why. Instead he got terrifyingly scrupulous about policing what his two-year-old sister said in public. Nate had reined in his technique as much as he could, but Linus hadn't been wrong. It had been necessary, until today.

Both kids had gotten a reasonable amount of food down--and they'd finished their half-hearted squabble about something Nate hadn't been paying attention to, possibly relating to Diana's collection of My Little Ponies--when Nate glanced over at Brad and Brad tilted his head. _Go for it._

"Linus," Nate said. "Do you know why we don't tell anybody what Dad's job is or where he goes when he goes away, or what his last name is?"

Linus looked totally taken aback, so that definitely was nowhere near whatever he'd been expecting. He frowned, pushing a piece of pancake through a puddle of syrup, obviously trying to get his head around that question.

"Dad's last name is the same as ours," Diana said, in the confidently withering tone only a four-year-old could bring to bear.

"No, it's Colbert." Naturally Linus pounced immediately on something he did know the answer to. His air of superiority belied the fact that he hadn't known that until a couple of years ago when he sounded out Brad's name from a uniform blouse and asked why he had Grandma and Grandpa's name on his shirt. "And Mommy's last name is Earley. Remember when we went to court and got our new birth certificates? They said it then."

Diana scowled. "I remember court."

Brad stepped in to head that off. "Hey, Linus, Daddy asked you a question. Are you going to answer him?"

Linus looked down at his pancakes with almost the same thwarted scowl Diana was wearing, but he said, "We don't tell people about Dad's work or where he goes or what his name is because that's our private family business and people who ask are nosy and rude and we should tell Daddy or Dad right away if somebody asks us about stuff like that and we shouldn't say anything to those people."

Nate was a little appalled at how totally perfect Linus's tautology of _omerta_ was. He hadn't realized quite how his own non-explanations sounded until Linus repeated them back verbatim.

"Not really, though," Brad said, and Linus looked up, staring blankly at him. 

"That's not really rude," Brad elaborated. "You tell people what Daddy's last name is, right? If Daddy goes to California or someplace for work, you can tell them that."

"Daddy went to California for work right before my birthday and Dad stayed home with us for a _week_ ," Diana announced, on firm ground now. She loved talking about that week. Brad had done her hair a new way _every day_ and they were still going to be hearing about it when she left for college.

"It's different," Linus said stubbornly.

"Yeah," Nate said. "We never really told you guys why it was different, though. It's not just because we like keeping secrets. We had to make sure nobody knew too much about Dad's job, because there were some rules Dad had to follow to be a Marine. I had to follow the same rules when I was a Marine, but that was before you kids were born, so it was easier then."

Linus unclenched a little at the promise of rules. Rules were familiar territory. "Dad? What rules?"

Brad took a breath and then said carefully, "I had to pretend I didn't love Daddy and didn't have a family with him."

Linus looked baffled and Diana's scowl transformed into something wide-eyed and hurt. Nate reached over and pulled her into his lap, syrup-sticky fork clenched in her sticky hand and all. 

"There was a rule," Brad went on slowly. "Everybody in the military had to either be straight, which means only boys with girls and girls with boys, or they had to pretend that they were. So if you were a guy in the military and you liked another guy, you had to keep it secret, and the same for women. Like Holly, you remember your babysitter Holly, in Boston?"

"Holly's married to Liz," Linus said, not dignifying the question of whether he remembered Holly with a direct response. "Do they have to keep it secret too?"

"No," Brad said. "Holly got kicked out of the Marines because somebody found out about her and Liz. Holly tried to follow the rule and pretend, but she got caught and she couldn't be a Marine anymore. I was pretty good at pretending, but we had to be careful that no one would find out that I was with Daddy."

"But lots of people know," Linus said. "My teachers and, and--"

"Lots of people in Maryland know," Brad said gently. "Our family knows, and our friends who we trust. And some people know that I'm Daddy's partner but they don't know I'm a Marine, or even what my last name is, so they can't tell on me. The people I work with don't know. That's why we don't go on base, and it's why you can't come with me to shop at the PX. That's why we don't go to parties with people I work with like we do with people Daddy works with."

"That's not fair," Linus said, in a strangled, horrified voice, and he turned his betrayed gaze from Brad to Nate. "Daddy, that's not--"

Nate would rather have had a syrupy fork stabbed through his heart than have Linus looking at him like that. "I know, buddy. That's why we didn't tell you about it."

"I don't wanna be a Marine," Diana abruptly announced, and Nate's grip on her tightened as Brad flinched like he'd gotten the same fork to the heart. 

"It's okay, princess," Brad said evenly. "All that stuff is over now. The rule changed today. Starting today, everybody can tell the truth. That's what we wanted to tell you guys--starting today, our rule changes too. You can tell people your dad is Gunnery Sergeant Brad Colbert of the United States Marine Corps, stationed at Quantico. You can tell them I fought in Iraq and Afghanistan. You can tell them I met your daddy when we were both in uniform. You can tell anyone anything, and it's all okay now."

"Can I tell at circle?" Diana asked brightly. "Can I take a picture of you to show? One of the dress blue ones?"

"Yeah," Brad said, breaking into a relieved smile, at the same time Linus said loudly, "Maybe you shouldn't, though."

That wasn't just Linus trying to boss Diana. For one thing he wasn't in the habit of contradicting Brad or Nate, and for another he dropped his gaze immediately, busying himself herding strawberry pieces into a row with his fork. 

"Why shouldn't she, little man?" Brad asked.

Linus shrugged stiffly and didn't look up. "What if they change the rule back? If we tell people then they'll know and you might get kicked out like Holly. So maybe we should just not tell. We didn't tell until now and it was okay."

"The rule isn't going to change back, buddy," Nate said. "It took a lot of work to change it the first time--Congress had to pass a law, the President signed it, and even after that they did a bunch of work to make sure that it would be okay this way. They're not going to just turn around and undo all of that. They know this is the right way for it to be."

Linus frowned harder and still didn't look up. "But they could. If they could change it one time they could change it again."

"Linus," Brad said, and that startled Linus into looking up and meeting his gaze. Nate watched, only half aware of Diana sawing at his pancakes with the side of her fork. 

"The only thing that anybody can do to me if the rule changes is tell me they don't want me to be a Marine anymore," Brad said. "But if they did that to me and all the other Marines like me, if they changed the rule and then changed it back--that would be even more unfair than making us pretend in the first place. If they did that, I wouldn't want to be a Marine anymore. If they want to make me choose between telling people who my family is and being a Marine, then I'm picking my family. So you can tell whoever you want, because _I'm_ going to tell whoever I want. You copy?"

Linus stared for a few seconds, and then he nodded and said, "Solid copy, Dad."

"Because it wasn't okay," Brad went on, holding Linus's gaze. "I have hated every day I had to pretend I wasn't with Daddy. I have hated every day of not telling everyone I know about my kids. And I'm not going to do it anymore."

"Me either," Linus said stoutly, and then, catching up, "You couldn't tell anybody about me? Or Deece?"

Brad shook his head. "I didn't think I could talk about you and Diana without talking about Daddy, so, no. I didn't tell anybody about any of you."

"But..." Linus looked over at Diana with a worried expression, and then back to Brad. "But when we drew pictures for you and stuff? When you had to go away? Did you, didn't you...." Linus trailed off, unable to even get the question out.

Brad was trying not to flinch. "I kept them, little man. Always. But I had to keep them somewhere no one would see. Sometimes I kept them in my pockets. The first time I went back to Iraq after you were born, I kept a picture of you and me and daddy with me every day. When I was down at Lejeune I kept them in my quarters where no one would see them. I had a whole drawer for your drawings and stuff, I looked at them all the time."

"Do you need more?" Diana asked. "I can draw some new pictures for you, Dad."

Brad took refuge in his coffee for a few seconds. Nate tightened his grip on Diana and finally pulled her plate over so she could eat her own breakfast instead of his. 

"That would be great, princess," Brad said finally. "I would love to have a picture to show everybody when I tell them about my daughter."

"I can draw one, too," Linus said immediately, and Brad leaned over to ruffle his hair.

"Yeah, little man. I'd like that."

* * *

Brad had to leave for work before Linus was done working on his masterpiece, possibly because he kept stopping to ask whether it was okay to tell specific people. Brad did have Diana's dashed-off picture of the family. It showed four stick-figures with slightly varying crayon hairstyles, Brad's with a credible attempt at camo fatigues colored over the body. It lay next to him on the passenger seat of the truck. Diana had insisted that he must not hide it in his pocket. 

Brad left it there when he got out of the truck--he didn't have time to take it anywhere else before he started his day. He glanced back at Diana's booster seat, which had stayed buckled in in back since the day the repeal was signed, and carefully propped up the picture in the passenger seat, so it would be visible to anyone walking by.

His phone buzzed with an incoming email as he was crossing the parking lot, and he pulled it out and opened Nate's message immediately. His eye went right to what he could see of the attached image: Linus's careful handwriting, penciled between blue lines: _Dear Mr. President, My Daddy says it is okay to tell you this. My name is Linus Fick and I have two dads. They are Marines..._

Brad jerked his gaze to Nate's accompanying message, which said only, _If I mail this, there's a fifty percent chance we get invited to the Easter Egg thing at the White House next year to be a gay military poster family._

Brad stopped there on the asphalt and replied: _If he wants you to send it, send it. I'll cope._

He pocketed his phone, took an extra breath, and then headed in to the base, forgetting everything but his job just like he did every day. He spent six hours with his current batch of officer-candidates, being their absolutely terrifying Sergeant Instructor until he sent them off to the classroom and hit the wardroom to compare literal and metaphorical notes with his fellow instructors.

It didn't take long before the usual bitching shaded into bitching about the DADT repeal implementation; there had been a lot of it back when they'd all had to go through the mandated training sessions. It was worn smooth now. Brad had already clocked the ones who were complaining because complaining was how they all communicated; he had sorted the ones not ruining anybody's fun by speaking up from the sincere homophobes. He wasn't sure where most of the others had him pegged--except Cam and Stoney, who he knew already knew at least some of what he hadn't been telling. He hadn't been as careful, the last nine months, and at least some of his brothers here were paying attention.

And now the big day was here, and Brad sat quietly and listened and waited patiently for a straight line to arrive. It showed up right on schedule, delivered by Brooks, who loved to rant and loved even more to get Brad to rant. He enjoyed listening to a master at work; Brad couldn't blame him. 

Brooks got to the end of his tirade about what was happening to the Marine Corps today, looked over at Brad, and said, "What about you, Iceman? What do you think of it?"

Brad looked up like he hadn't been paying attention at all and said consideringly, "Well, I don't think it's _quite_ the worst thing the Corps has ever done to me personally."

That shut everyone up; no one had said a word that wasn't a safely couched generality so far. 

"I mean," Brad went on, enjoying the sense of an audience tuning in, "yeah, the new policy pretty much assures that my kids are going to grow up fuckin' bleeding-heart liberals, but I knew that when I got involved with somebody who graduated from _two_ Ivy League schools." 

He could see them doing the math on what that meant, when they'd never heard Brad mention kids or a significant other; there was a little murmur going on here and there, guys who weren't quite as fast on the uptake looking for confirmation. But you didn't get into this billet without being fucking sharp--Brad was hardly the only veteran of recon in the room--so they were mostly following him, showing varying levels of shock and amusement. Some were still lagging behind, so Brad went ahead and turned the corner.

"On the other hand, gay marriage isn't legal anywhere around here yet, so I am assured that I've got another three, maybe four good years before I have to make an honest man of my kids' other dad--" Stoney actually whooped out loud with startled laughter, and a couple of guys Brad had braced to have hate from now on went conspicuously silent and still. "And on that supposedly joyous occasion, I am going to have to deal with a few dozen drunk Marines in the same space as a dance floor, a _Rolling Stone_ reporter, and my impressionable young daughter.

"So it's not the worst way the Corps has ever fucked me," Brad summed up, grinning. "But it's pretty close."

Brooks, to his credit, had followed Brad through all of that and was grinning like he'd planned the show himself. "You're worried about your impressionable daughter, man? Shouldn't you be worried about a few dozen drunk Marines and your Ivy League hubby?"

"Oh, no," Brad said, leaning back and folding his arms behind his head. "Captain Fick can look out for himself."

* * *

Diana had the picture Daddy had printed for her in an envelope. She took her favorite spot in circle, next to Aidan, who had been her best friend since the first day of school, when they noticed that their names had all the same letters but in a different order. 

"What'd you bring?" Aidan whispered, but Miss Logan was already starting the circle song, so Diana didn't have a chance to tell him. 

When it was sharing time, Diana raised her hand high, going right up on her knees to be seen, but Miss Logan still called on Alex and Sophia first. Diana remembered what Dad said about patience and stayed still with her hand up all through their shares, and then Miss Logan finally said, "Diana, what would you like to share today?"

Diana got the picture out of the envelope and held it up. It was a picture from last November, when Daddy and Dad both got dressed up in their best uniforms to go to the Ball with Mommy and Aunt Trish. "These are my daddies. They're both Marines and until today I wasn't allowed to tell anybody but now I can."

She pointed to Daddy in the picture and said, "This is my daddy and he was a Captain and then he retired and now he has a regular job. And this is my dad, and he's Gunnery Sergeant Brad Colbert and he works at Quantico in Virginia, teaching new Marines how to be good officers like daddy was when they were recon Marines together."

Miss Logan didn't say anything for a minute, and then she came around the circle and touched Diana's shoulder and said, "Is it okay if we put your picture up on the board for today?"

Diana nodded, pleased. Not everybody's shares got to go up on the board. 

"Does anybody have questions about what Diana shared today?" Miss Logan asked. She only did that for the really good shares. Diana wiggled a little bit, pleased with herself.

There was a silence from the rest of the circle, and then Aidan said, "What's recon Marines?"

Diana was glad he asked that, and not about why Diana used to not be able to tell. She didn't like the part about Dad having to pretend and Holly not being a Marine anymore, and the rules didn't make any sense anyway.

Diana knew all the important things about recon Marines, though.

"Recon is the best Marines," Diana explained. "They're better than other Marines and they do all the coolest stuff. Recon is the kind I'm going to be, when I'm a Marine. Just like my dads."


End file.
